


Lest faith turn to despair:  Act V - Sunday

by If_all_the_world_and_love_were_young



Series: Lest faith turn to despair [6]
Category: Young Americans (TV)
Genre: Boarding School, Criticism, Drama, F/M, Literary References & Allusions, Multi, Poetry, Pop Culture, Rawley Academy, Rebirth/rejuvenation, Sexual Content, Surreal, Teen Romance, True Love, Unofficial Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-18 18:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 20
Words: 67,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/If_all_the_world_and_love_were_young/pseuds/If_all_the_world_and_love_were_young
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/89848">Lest faith turn to despair</a></em> is a critical appreciation, in the form of a fanfiction sequel, of Steven Antin’s <em>Young Americans</em> (Columbia TriStar & Mandalay Television for The WB network, 2000), a dramatic essay in philosophy of love.</p>
<p><strong>Synopsis</strong>:  The original drama’s “true love” story affects that drama’s other characters.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/89848">Lest faith turn to despair</a></em> is a drama in five acts, plus <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438123/chapters/3025873">prologue</a>, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438438/chapters/3034030">intermezzo</a>, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3035860">envoi</a> and <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1437208">notes</a>.  Each act, like the intermezzo, covers one of six consecutive days around the Thanksgiving following the original drama.  Due to its length, it is posted on <em>Archive of Our Own</em> as a series of six works, with the notes as a separate work.</p>
<p>All sexually active characters are above the legal age of consent in the setting place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Frontispiece

The original drama,  _Young Americans_ , may be viewed online [here](http://www.youtube.com/user/IckyGrub).  Antin’s public comments on it may be read [here](https://sites.google.com/site/rawleyrevisited/antin-on-ya).

 

 [](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-kP6x9YrqpKw/U1Cmal9ZacI/AAAAAAAABQY/JajpytENjN0/w640-h480-no/Veritas+est+virtus.jpg)

 

Love is strong as death, passion unyielding as the grave;

the flashes thereof are of fire, a very flame of the Lord.

– _Song of Song_ s 8:6

 

To be and to be seen to be thankful;

this is truly not only the greatest of the virtues,

but also the mother of all the rest.

– Cicero, _Pro Plancio_ xxxiii.

 

Stranger, dreams are very curious and unaccountable things, and they do not always come true.

There are two gates through which these unsubstantial fancies proceed;

one is of horn, the other of ivory. Those that come through the gate of ivory are fatuous,

but those from the gate of horn mean something.

– Penelope to the disguised Odysseus, _Odyssey_ xix

 

*       *       *


	2. Series Contents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Links to other parts of the drama, _[Lest faith turn to despair](http://archiveofourown.org/series/89848)_ , which, due to its length, is published on _Archive of Our Own_ as a series.

**[Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/89848) Contents** :

[Notes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1437208): setting; _dramatis personae_ ; genre; allusions; obscenity; chronology.

[Prologue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438123/chapters/3025873)

[Act I - Tuesday](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438123)

[Act II - Wednesday](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438222)

[Act III - Thanksgiving Day](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438309)

[Intermezzo - Friday](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438438/chapters/3034030)

[Act IV - Saturday](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438438)

[Act V - Sunday](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567)

[Envoi](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3035860)

 

Each act of this drama has its own scene-specific table of contents.

 

Photo above is of Jake Pratt (Katherine Moennig), from episode 5 of _Young Americans_.

 

*       *       *


	3. Contents of Act V - Sunday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Links to the scenes of Act V of [_Lest faith turn to despair_](http://archiveofourown.org/series/89848).
> 
> Each below-listed scene of Act V is a chapter of this work.

 

**Act V - Sunday**

     [Scene 1 – Coming here forever](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3034612)

     [Scene 2 - _Sed revocare gradum_ …](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3034729)

     [Scene 3 - Rosy-fingered dawn](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3034747)

     [Scene 4 - _Hoc opus, hic labor est_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3034759)

     [Scene 5 - Sweet sixteen](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3034783)

     [Scene 6 - Thanksgiving Yet to Come](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3034816)

     [Scene 7 - Red-hots and a fairy tale](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3034894)

     [Scene 8 - A proper breakfast](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3035053)

     [Scene 9 - Prizes and peanut butter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3035074)

     [Scene 10 - The Sunday _Times_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3035125)

     [Scene 11 - My love, she speaks like silence](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3035158)

     [Scene 12 - _Vita nostra brevis est_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3035182)

     [Scene 13 - When you are old](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3035239)

     [Scene 14 - Over the rainbow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3035329)

     [Scene 15 – Where is fancy bred?](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3035401)

     [Scene 16 - The quality of mercy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1438567/chapters/3035593)

 

Photo above is of Katherine Moennig (Jake Pratt) and Ian Somerhalder (Hamilton Fleming) by Ken Browar (summer 2000, released 2004).

           *       *       *

 

 


	4. Scene 1 – Coming here forever

EXT - RAWLEY GUEST COTTAGE. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (NIGHT – BEFORE DAWN)

 

Establishing shot of the cottage, built in hunting-lodge style with an unhewn-log exterior, nestled in the woods, set a bit back from the now-thawed lake. Snow glistens on the ground and the tree branches under the light of the setting, just-past-full moon. A dim light shines behind the blind-covered cottage windows. All’s quiet, nothing stirs.

 

 

 

INT - RAWLEY GUEST COTTAGE. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (NIGHT - BEFORE DAWN)

 

(The guest cottage consists of a living room dominated by a large flagstone fireplace, a small kitchen and a dining area behind it, and, opposite the hearth, two bedrooms with a bathroom behind them, each opening onto the living room. From the door, set in the wall facing the lake, the living room, kitchen and dining area are on the left, the fireplace in the middle of the left-hand wall, the bedrooms and bathroom on the right. An enclosed porch, its outer walls covered above the bottom two feet with jalousie windows, fronts the door and the living room side of the cottage; a large casement widow pierces the wall between the living room and the porch. The windows are equipped with bamboo slat blinds like those in the dorm rooms; all are lowered. The ceiling is open above large structural rafters, the walls are cedar-paneled floor-to-ceiling, save for the kitchen and inlaid bookshelves to the right of the fireplace, and the floors are hardwood, creating a rustic ambiance. The wall hangings celebrate rural New England. The furnishings are Rawley institutional: the same mission couches and New England comb-back chairs seen in the DEAN’s study and in FINN’s living room, the same table seen in FINN’s dining room and the family dining room of the DEAN’s residence. The Rawley crest hangs above the mantel, the Rawley seal is displayed on the headboards of the comb-back chairs.

The only light comes from a wheel-fixture suspended from the central rafter, dimmed low, and from a low fire in the hearth, from in front of which the coffee table has been moved, replaced by a couple of quilts and four pillows, now in some disarray. The room is otherwise in good order. Four somewhat soiled Rawley-crest cloth napkins and a Rawley snow-dome paperweight lie on the otherwise clean dining table. A loop of _[Nick Drake: A Treasury](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treasury)_ , currently on “[From the morning](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2JjJPDz3EE),” plays softly on a CD player on the lowest of the built-in bookshelves. From inside the bathroom, the door to which is closed, comes the faint hum of a hair dryer. Coffee finishes brewing in an espresso pot on the stove.

WILL and HAMILTON, shirtless and barefoot, wearing the same corduroy slacks and brushed denim jeans as the day before, are in the kitchen, their hair towel-dried and still half-wet. As HAMILTON finishes drying and putting into a kitchen cupboard some wine glasses and plates, WILL takes four Rawley-crest mugs and a saucer down from the cupboard, takes two spoons out of a drawer and puts them on the saucer, pours coffee into the mugs.)

WILL (opening the refrigerator, looking inside): No milk?

HAMILTON: Sadly, no. Just soy powder. Over by the toaster. But Jake loathes that stuff.

WILL (closing the refrigerator door): So does Bella. Oh well …

(WILL and HAMILTON carry the mugs to the dining table, return to the kitchen, carry the saucer and a small tray of packets of sugar and soy creamer to the table. They go into the living room, look at the quilts, exchange grins. Each picks up a quilt and two pillows. They exit, one into each bedroom.

After a brief pause, keys rattle softly in the front door. The camera goes to the door connecting the living room to the porch, quietly opens it, revealing the GROUNDSKEEPER, in his usual Ignatius Reilly garb, holding out a one-pint glass bottle of milk.)

GROUNDSKEEPER (softly, shrugging): Sorry.

(The camera takes the milk from the GROUNDSKEEPER, jiggling a bit as it does so. The GROUNDSKEEPER nods his thanks, turns, leaves, quietly closing the front door behind him. The camera quietly closes the door to the porch, places the milk bottle on the dining table, returns to its vantage point near the door.

HAMILTON emerges from a bedroom, WILL a few seconds later from the other. Both go to the coffee table, move it back into place between the couches.  They then go to the dining table, look at the milk bottle, then at each other.)

HAMILTON: Thanks.

WILL: Not me, man.

HAMILTON: Yeh, right.

(WILL shrugs, takes two mugs, hands one to HAMILTON, starts to drink. HAMILTON looks first at the milk bottle, then, a bit reprovingly, at WILL, clears his throat slightly.)

WILL: Oh, yeh. … (He sets down his mug, takes the milk bottle into the kitchen, opens the cupboard, finds a small Rawley-crest pitcher, pours some milk into it, leaves the milk bottle in the kitchen, carries the pitcher to the dining table, sets it down.) … Better?

HAMILTON: Much. … You’re shivering.

WILL: I’m exhausted. And freezing. We could just go back to bed.

HAMILTON: Will, Bella wants to watch the dawn of her first day with you. Think about it.

WILL: Sorry. I suppose it’ll be warmer when the girls join us.

HAMILTON: It’ll be warmer right now.

(HAMILTON takes WILL’s hand, leads him to stand by the hearth. After both boys have had a few sips of coffee, HAMILTON sets first his mug, then WILL’s, on the mantle. WILL, accepting the invitation, pulls HAMILTON to him, locks foreheads.)

HAMILTON: Better?

WILL: Much.

HAMILTON: You’re not used to going this short on sleep, are you?

WILL: Like, none at all? No.

HAMILTON: Price of love, Will.

WILL: I’ll pay it, then. … Thanks, Ham. For Bella. For everything.

HAMILTON (resting an arm on WILL’s shoulder, trying to ruffle his half-wet hair): That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?

WILL: Not just for Bella and me, I hope.

HAMILTON: Time will tell, old artist.

WILL: Not so old as you … nor so young.

(The hum of the hair-dryer from the bathroom ceases.)

HAMILTON (softly, nuzzling WILL’s neck): So, boy, how does one love beauty well?

WILL (pulling back to look into HAMILTON’s eyes and gauge his reaction): By understanding that it’s given to us to evoke passion, to help us express compassion? That one can’t truly love it for its own sake?

HAMILTON: Not bad, for a first-year. Perhaps that town scholarship wasn’t utterly … Ow!

WILL: You never quite grow up, do you?

HAMILTON: Would you want me to?

WILL: Just so long as you’re perched over the school door whenever I come back … or leave.

HAMILTON: Always.

WILL: Good. ‘Cause I’ll be coming here forever.

(The bathroom door opens. JAKE and BELLA come out, hair dried, JAKE wearing HAMILTON’s dress shirt, BELLA wearing WILL’s flannel shirt, each closed only at the bottom two buttons. WILL and HAMILTON turn to look at them.)

WILL: Are we lucky or what?

BELLA: Hi, guys.

(WILL and HAMILTON each extend an arm toward the girls, who join the boys in front of the fire, each between the boys, opposite each other. The boys kiss them – each his own, then the other’s.)

WILL (breaking off, to JAKE): Coffee?

JAKE: Think I’ve earned some?

WILL (after giving JAKE a sharp neck-bite): Answer that for me, will ya, Ham?

(While JAKE and HAMILTON make out, WILL and BELLA go to the dining table, fix coffee for the two girls. Milk only for JAKE. Milk and way too much sugar for BELLA.)

BELLA (after taking a drink): Perfect.

WILL (taking BELLA’s cup, setting it down): Rawley.

(BELLA and WILL kiss, then return to JAKE and HAMILTON, WILL carrying JAKE’s coffee, BELLA her own.)

JAKE (disengaging a bit from HAMILTON, taking her coffee from WILL): Thanks, boy. (She drinks.)

WILL (taking the two coffees off the mantel, handing one to HAMILTON): Hamilton, Jacqueline … thank you.

BELLA (leaning in to kiss HAMILTON): Yes.

JAKE (nuzzling WILL): Bella, you and Will were the first people Hamilton and I came out of the closet to. We really wanted you with us the night we came out to everybody.

WILL: Love should never isolate lovers. But that’s over for you now. And sharing your joy in that made our first night even better.

(JAKE sets her coffee and WILL’s on the mantle, kisses him. She’ll have none of his lips-only nonsense.)

HAMILTON (breaking off, sipping his coffee): You know … this might have happened in August … in the cabin, on the road to Carson … if Scout and Sean hadn’t showed up.

JAKE (breaking off, to BELLA): It was about to happen, wasn’t it?

BELLA (gazing into WILL's eyes, smiling): You and Hamilton had just told us your story … 

JAKE: 'Cause Will had just told me his … to comfort me … to let me know I wasn't the only one who hadn't come here honestly … and that Finn gives kids second chances when he can. … (To WILL:) But you were _sooooo_  slow!

WILL (shrugging): I thought we had all night … (He takes his coffee and JAKE’s off the mantle.) 

JAKE (taking her coffee, snuggling back into WILL): Sorry. Hammy and I were kinda impatient. Just cuddling while Bella lay there with her head on your lap, and you stroked her hair, wasn’t exactly our idea of a perfect last night together. But we couldn’t do more until you kissed her. And just when it looked like you were finally gonna do that, Bella’s fan club turned up and scared the crap out of us.

WILL: None of us took the interruption too well, did we? 

BELLA: No, but it worked out. Maybe for the best.

WILL: Yeh. … Way better than hurting Sean and Scout. It just took some time. … And it gave us all time to swap stories the next day … (Nuzzling JAKE's head:) Time for separate stories to merge, like railroad tracks converging at the horizon …

JAKE: Symbolism addict.

WILL (kissing her forehead): Guilty as charged.

HAMILTON: Speaking of time, we should get going.

JAKE: Yeh, we should. Mark and Anne will be waiting.

(The music stops. The fire-flames cease moving. WILL and BELLA remain frozen, sipping their coffees.)

BELLA (taking HAMILTON's coffee, setting it and her own coffee on the mantel): Speaking of time, Ham, I’ve stopped it. Come with, please.

HAMILTON (astonished): You can’t do this. It’s Will’s dream.

BELLA (pulling HAMILTON into the middle of the room): Obviously I can, so obviously it’s not. Not his alone, anymore. I suspect it hasn’t been for some time, whatever time means here.

HAMILTON: But … how?

BELLA: Didn’t you give me a scholarship? A town scholarship? From the town, to Rawley?

HAMILTON: Uh … yeh.

BELLA: And what is Rawley?

HAMILTON: Uh … Will’s dream of a perfect youth. One he never really had. “Cheated on his entrance exam.” Yeh, right.

BELLA: And the town – “New” Rawley?

HAMILTON: Reality … where people never quite love well enough.

BELLA (gently, caressing HAMILTON's chest): We can learn. … And our town, our reality - it's full of …?

HAMILTON (sheepishly): Older folks, like you and Will and Sean. Kinda poor in the only countable thing that counts - time. Hence the 1920s gas station architecture, the 1930s Coke machine, the 1940s gas pumps and trucks, the 1950s air pump and diner decor and drive-in theater, the allusions to books and songs and films and events of the 1960s and ‘70s, the games and jokes about time …

BELLA: Right. We’re never too old to go to Rawley. And here I am. Now you have two town scholarships. Two grown-ups allowed to dream of a perfect youth. At least two.

HAMILTON (trying to focus): That’s impossible. You’re not enrolled yet.

BELLA: Do I need to be? Ham, I’m not just the town scholarship girl. I’m Will’s lover now. Think it might last? Like until we’re old? Or did you get us together just for kicks?

HAMILTON (a bit wistfully): I don’t do anything just for kicks.

BELLA: Uh - huh. And if I’m loving Will well, when we’re both old, when he’s dreaming of a perfect youth, how can I not share his dream?

HAMILTON: Oh … No wonder Will never took you for himself before, just let you keep angsting endlessly with Scout. And no wonder he let you just keep going to Edmund, while you out-flirted and out-thought Scout and him. With more than one dreamer, it would have gotten even weirder.

BELLA (playfully): Like fooling around with six girls at once? And that raunchy _Pinky and the Brain_ fantasy in the sauna? And the interminable homoerotic play in the whirlpool? I thought you guys would never leave that tub.

HAMILTON: Uh … I’ve enjoyed it.

BELLA: Duh! … You’ve been the one having all the fun. I mean, how many people have you taken over the edge in the past four days?

HAMILTON (nuzzling): Should I count you?

BELLA: You’re hilarious.

HAMILTON: Hmmm … uh … six … plus Mark … Lena, Jake … Anne … Liz, Sean … you, Will … uh, fourteen?

BELLA: Aren’t you forgetting someone?

HAMILTON: Who?

BELLA: Ryder, Hamilton.

HAMILTON: No way!

BELLA: Susan said yesterday that he likes to be hurt. And Mark and Will notice things.

HAMILTON: Like what?

BELL: At your poetry reading Wednesday night, when Ryder came back to the common room, after you humped him with his arms half out of their sockets, he’d changed from board shorts into jeans.

HAMILTON (sputtering): I didn’t … even if that happened … I didn’t mean it to.

BELLA: Didn’t you?

HAMILTON: Maybe Ryder just wanted to change into something more dignified before he read.

BELLA: Uh – huh. Whatever, fourteen. Kinda lively, don’t ya think?

HAMILTON: Only a little livelier than Will. And Scout and Mark aren’t far behind.

BELLA: Yeh, last summer was never like this!

HAMILTON: So is all this your doing?

BELLA (still playful): Are you kidding? I have kids of my own now. I don’t let them near crap like this.

HAMILTON: That’s sorta harsh. I mean, I couldn’t stay a virgin forever and do what I need to do … for Jake, for Will and you.

BELLA: Yeh, the confused virgin love god – that was a class act. … Ya wanna have sex?

HAMILTON: Again? Now? Just you and me?

BELLA (unfastening his the button of his jeans): Uh - huh.

HAMILTON: Aren’t you supposed to be in love with Will?

BELLA (unzipping him, revealing his dark green silk boxers): I am. But loving … whatever you are … isn’t being unfaithful, is it? It just helps me love Will better, right?

HAMILTON: Well … yeh. But I can’t do that outside a dream – which is kinda where you are now.

BELLA (disappointed, moving her hand up to graze his abdomen): Why only in dreams, Ham?

HAMILTON: You really do not want to know the answer to that. … Besides, I’m in love with Jake.

BELLA: Truly? Not just in the dream?

HAMILTON: Truly.

BELLA: But outside the dream she’s … everybody. All the people who think they can’t be loved or can’t love well … who don’t understand how love works. How can you be in love with everybody?

(HAMILTON pulls BELLA to him and kisses her. Well. Indescribably well. BELLA moans, arches, shudders. HAMILTON slowly, gently breaks off, looks into her eyes.)

BELLA (sated, awed): That was …

HAMILTON: Shhhh …

BELLA (nestling into him, after a pause): Is that why you’re messing with everybody now? Because Jake is everybody?

HAMILTON: I don’t know. I don’t dream it. I can only do what the dreamer lets me do.

BELLA: But we’ve all gotten things, here, better than we could dream of.

HAMILTON: Only when you let that happen - when you share your dreaming … when you trust.

BELLA: Well, the raunchy stuff’s not mine, and I’m pretty sure it’s not Will’s. Same for the literary crap – the allusions are getting even more arcane, some stuff I doubt Will’s ever read.

HAMILTON: If it’s not yours, or Will’s, then whose is it?

BELLA: Maybe Will’s dream is doing what he wants it to do.

HAMILTON: Helping him love you better?

BELLA: Not just me, Ham. … Outside the dream, when Will and I are older … he’s already written it up.

HAMILTON (flattered and aroused): Really?

BELLA: Uh - huh. So the other dreamer, or dreamers, could be anybody. Anybody who’s read it. … Or watched it.

HAMILTON: Watched it?

BELLA: Will’s put it on television.

HAMILTON (putting BELLA’s hands on his chest): Oh wow. … Any good?

BELLA (giving him what he wants): Beautiful … and subtle - except when it can’t be.

HAMILTON: Like?

BELLA (her hands halting): Like when all the kids run into the lake in their underwear on the first day of summer term. Why did you pull poor Will and Scout into that? You knew what would happen. And what kind of “rite of passage” is that, anyhow, for a school that teaches true love?

HAMILTON (gently stroking inside BELLA’s shirt): A backwards one, from old to young? A baptism, a rebirth?

BELLA: Your second baptism was way better. The one Finn gave you after his catechism about listening to the lake, to history, and hearing the sound of opportunity to exceed expectations. The one Jacqueline called Finn a wanker for giving you.

HAMILTON: She was overdressed for swimming.

BELLA: Because she was messed up.

HAMILTON: Bella, that second dunking _is_ better. It’s a rite of passage going forward – from youth to maturity. It’s about growth. But before we can grow, we have to know we need to grow – we have to feel young.

BELLA: But Ham, the lake run’s just raw sex. And what follows it, till that second dunking, is all crap – the hazing, my ignoring Will and hitting on Scout, Scout and Will's telling each other lies, Will's raving about Faulkner, Finn's saying passion comes from the groin …

HAMILTON: My hitting on Jake?

BELLA: Of course _you're_ not affected by the lake run. You're the true lover, you're Rawley. But for the rest of us, that lake run's everything that Rawley’s not.

HAMILTON: So maybe it's what WIll's dream is trying to grow us out of - to save us from. Remember what Scout said when he saw it?

BELLA: “Gotta love tradition.” Which is pretty leadenly ironic …

HAMILTON: Is it? How's Tradition doing?

(BELLA shoots HAMILTON a puzzled look.)

HAMILTON: Tradition with a capital "T."

BELLA: Not well.

HAMILTON: Miss the metaphysics?

BELLA: No, but too often … the emotional baby's thrown out with that bathwater.

HAMILTON: So now all that’s left, for a lot of people, like Jake’s mom, is … ?

BELLA (after a pause): Sex … a lake run. … So what said Scout isn’t just ironic. It’s …

HAMILTON: Doubly ironic? Subtle?  

BELLA (smiling): Yeh. 'Cause Will does love tradition.

HAMILTON: Enough to try to dream it young again.

BELLA: I know. … (Resuming her attentions to HAMILTON's chest:) And Ham, on film, Will’s made it so subtle, so ironic, so tender, so beautiful … it’s like … he’s trying to love his viewers the way you love Jacqueline - letting his love speak like silence.

HAMILTON (nuzzling BELLA’s head): Mmmm … tell me.

BELLA: Lie down with me?

HAMILTON: Sure, gorgeous.

(BELLA leads HAMILTON to a couch, stands him next to it, kneels down in front of him, removes his jeans slowly and well. Stepping out of them, HAMILTON pulls BELLA back up. He kisses her while fully unbuttoning her shirt, then gently pulls her down onto the couch on top of him, one of his legs between hers, his other foot on the floor. Breaking off, looking into her eyes, he slides BELLA down to straddle his thigh. Bending his knee slightly, he flexes his thigh in a slow rhythm coordinated with pressure on her ass from his hand nearer the couch-back, caressing her head with his other hand. BELLA, accepting the invitation, begins slowly, almost imperceptibly, to ride HAMILTON’s thigh, while gently engaging his chest with her mouth and his abdomen with a hand.)

HAMILTON (softly): So tell me.

BELLA (purring): Will narrates each episode, Ham, at its beginning and end. He seems to talk in the present about things happening in the present. But at the very end, he shifts to the past tense, like he’s talking about something that happened long ago. But of course it’s full of kids talking about songs and films that just came out in the last few years, so it can’t be a memory of long ago.

HAMILTON: So viewers don’t find out it’s a dream till the end? They have to watch it again to understand it? Will’s such a tease …

BELLA: They can’t be sure till the end. But, all through, of course, there are hints that it’s Will’s dream.

HAMILTON: Like Will’s calling himself a dreamer in his essay about why he needs to be at Rawley.

BELLA (nodding): And some of them are kinda funny, when you get the joke. Like Scout telling Will, “It’s all in your head,” when Will said he doesn’t belong here. And Finn calling Will “Atlas” – the guy who carries this world on his shoulders. And all the things that are way too old make the time frame impossibly muddled.

HAMILTON: Like me telling my mom I wouldn’t be going off to the Viet Nam war – that was so weird.

BELLA: Mmmm … But Will can do things on film that we can’t do here in the dream, Ham. Like when that black-and-white photo of the rowing crew holding the parents’ weekend regatta trophy is shot, the film goes white, as if it were taken by some really old camera using a flash even outdoors, and when the image of the crew comes back, it’s frozen – and black-and-white.

HAMILTON (impressed): Like it’s just a really old memory.

BELLA: Yeh. … And at the very start, when Will says he’s about to go to Rawley … he’s shown writing.

HAMILTON (purring): Because Rawley’s his writer’s dream, and he comes here by writing about it.

BELLA: And we first see you when Will first enters Rawley – perched over the door he’s just gone in through – to show that you’re Rawley. And right then, when you first see Jake, your camera is shown pointed at the film camera – at the viewer – whenever you see Jake through it. That shows everybody that Jake is them – that by saving Jake in the dream, you’re trying to save everybody outside the dream.

HAMILTON (grazing the line of Bella’s jaw, increasing his hand pressure on her lower back): Am I?

BELLA: You know you are. … (Biting her lip:) Oh god … (She burrows into HAMILTON’s chest, shudders slightly, pauses. Recovering:) And Ham, the last shot, at the very end, is of your dad’s note telling Will that he can come back to Rawley in the fall. And …

HAMILTON: Will stops there? At the end of summer session? When nobody knows yet what will happen to you or Jake?

BELLA: Uh – huh. Will likes ambiguity. Says it makes it more about the viewer, about how the viewer uses free will.

HAMILTON: I know, but… 

BELLA: He says if he can make viewers feel what Jacqueline felt, then they’ll know how the story ends for her. 'Cause they'll trust you.

HAMILTON: And for you?

BELLA: And for Will and me – because true love changes the people it touches. Including viewers, if they're willing, 'cause Will's really trying to help you change them.

HAMILTON: I know.

BELLA: And in that last shot, Finn sticks your dad’s note on Scout’s mirror, so when viewers read it, they’re looking into a mirror.

HAMILTON (impressed): Letting them know it’s really about them … that they can come back to Rawley, too – they just have to dream it themselves.

BELLA: And the first time Jacqueline’s shown in girl clothes … a few days after the cotillion … her _Vanishing Point_ poster is shown in her mirror, reversed … then blocked by you kissing her … to show that you’re reversing her self-destructive behavior, and obliterating its causes by loving her.

HAMILTON (arching): That’s really artful. I didn’t know Will had it in him to use pictures like that.

BELLA: He’s had a good teacher. … But maybe it’s too artful, too subtle. Will marketed it as a show for teenage girls. Hardly any of them seem to understand it.

HAMILTON (closing his eyes, holding BELLA’s head to his chest): Teenage girls?

BELLA: Mmmm …

HAMILTON (purring): They don’t need to understand it. Just to feel it. They can understand it when they’re older. … And I’m the star?

BELLA: Yeh, you are. Everybody seems to get that. Which is kinda weird, ‘cause I get the most air time.

HAMILTON (elated, arching even more): Mmmm … And I’m still the star now.

BELLA (amused but thoughtful): Yeh, more so now than ever.

HAMILTON (opening his eyes, pulling BELLA up to look into hers): Bella, does that bother you?

BELLA: What, Ham?

HAMILTON (nuzzling her affectionately): That you get less attention now, while I get more.

BELLA: Are you kidding? I’ve got a job, a family to feed, and a wonderful wacky husband to keep loosely tethered to reality. And now, whenever I’m in the dream, I’ve actually got to be here, at least partly conscious of it, like Will. I don’t have time for more than a supporting role.

HAMILTON: Bella …

BELLA: OK, it does bother me a little. But unlike the teenage girls, I get that my role here is partly symbolic. That my writer-husband’s love for me is partly his love for beauty, that it’s partly about artists and art. And that my role is partly to help him love everyone through his art, his writing. By showing them how well you love Jake. And how they could love better.

HAMILTON (lifting Bella’s chin): Oh, girl …

BELLA (pulling back): Enough! I can’t take more than one of those kisses in a single morning. Just … let me show you how I feel, OK?

(HAMILTON smiles, nods, closes his eyes again. BELLA slides back down onto his thigh, continues to work on him until all the usual signs tell her he’s where she wants him.)

BELLA: Like heaven?

HAMILTON (fondling BELLA’s head reflexively): Close … so close.

BELLA: Ham?

HAMILTON: Mmmm … ?

BELLA: I love you.

HAMILTON: I know.

BELLA: So does Will.

HAMILTON: Girl, I’ve felt it. More than ever these past few days. Especially tonight.

BELLA: You know, all the things Will says about Rawley – that it’s perfect, that it’s heaven on earth, a place where dreams really do come true, where anything is possible – they’re all really about you. ‘Cause you’re Rawley. You’re the Dean’s son, you’re the door-ward, you’re the real teacher.

HAMILTON: Bella, I love you and Will, too. And I can do that so much better now that you’re together … and Jake’s here.

BELLA: It’s so different now, isn’t it?

HAMILTON (opening his eyes, grinning): Well, yeh.

BELLA (biting his chest): Not just that. Back when this was just Will’s dream, you didn’t say much. He let you be ambiguous, except that his saying things like that Rawley is the perfect life implied that you’re the perfect lover. Because even though, inside the dream, as a kid, he loves words, outside the dream, he understands their limits. So he let your love for Jake … and his for you … speak like silence.

HAMILTON: He’s learned that you have to feel it.

BELLA: But whoever’s dreaming this now isn’t doing that. Now you and Jacqueline talk about what you think and feel. Instead of mostly just making goo-goo eyes at each other, like you did last summer.

HAMILTON: Yeh. Why? Don’t people like that? Don’t we do it well?

BELLA: God, don’t tempt me. … You and Jackie do that unbelievably well. And we all love it. Will, me, everybody. Is there any less goo-goo eyes now?

HAMILTON: No. Just … more words.

BELLA: Yeh. The eye love, the love that speaks like silence … it’s wonderful, Ham. It makes us feel it, better than words ever could. But after we’ve felt it, we need to understand it, if we’re going to try to do it. Maybe that’s what the words are for. And maybe that’s part of what Anne and Mark are here for. To give you and Jackie people to talk to, so that we can all understand you better.

HAMILTON: Maybe. But Bella – Jake and I were so lonely …

BELLA: I know. … Will and I are really glad you have them, Ham. And grateful that you’re sharing them with us. We so want to love them with you. Even if we’re six different people, we’re all trying not to be. We’re all trying to be one person, one body, one self. Our true self.

(HAMILTON kisses BELLA intensely, lifts his hips, puts one of her hands on the waist of his boxers, plainly inviting her to strip him.)

BELLA (breaking off): Outside the dream, Ham?

HAMILTON (softly): Bella, you’re so ready. Don’t you want to stay … here, in the dream, always?

BELLA (a bit sadly): Work to do. People who need me. “Miles to go before I sleep.”

HAMILTON: Sorry, Bella. Truly sorry. … Forgive me?

BELLA: Help me try to stay ready?

HAMILTON: Always.

(HAMILTON kisses BELLA gently, puts his arms back behind his head. BELLA rests her head on his chest.)

BELLA (after a pause): So Jackie’s the only one who doesn’t know.

HAMILTON: That she’s in a dream? Of us four, yes.

BELLA: Are you going to tell her, Ham?

HAMILTON: Why would I do that? … You feel sorry for her?

BELLA: A little.

HAMILTON: Don’t. Jacqueline’s wholly in the dream, Bella. For her, it’s come true. She doesn’t have to wait. She’s already there. And our dream is truer than what you call reality. Someday it’ll come true for all of us, it’ll become reality. We’ll throw what we now call reality to the wind.

BELLA: A lot of it does belong in the crappers. … And then?

HAMILTON: And then we’ll dream a new, even better dream. Exceed expectations, and set new ones. Otherwise we’re not dreaming a dream that’s worthy of us – we’re just stuck wondering whether we’re worthy of the dream. But one dream at a time, OK? It’s not about the big picture, it’s really all about the moments …

BELLA (folding her hands together on HAMILTON’s chest, resting her chin on them, looking up at him): Ham, you sound a lot like Will sometimes.

HAMILTON: Why shouldn’t I? He’s my head, I’m his heart. He loves Rawley like Jake loves me, Rawley loves him back the way I love Jake. He’s Rawley’s Jake, and I’m Jake’s Rawley.

BELLA: You’re not Orpheus? Or the princess who kisses the frog? The beauty who falls for the beast? Or Odysseus? Or Cupid? Or Janus? Will’s called you all of those, at one time or another. … For Jackie, of course, you’re an angel, ever since you kissed her.

HAMILTON: Ah, you caught the gratuitous Sarah McLachlan allusion?

BELLA: Of course. And the “Goo-Goo Dolls” _Dizzy Up the Girl_  poster in Will’s dorm room at the end of summer term. Two allusions to the soundtrack of _City of Angels_. Both wrong?

HAMILTON: What do ya mean?

BELLA: Well, you can’t be all those things.

HAMILTON (raising his foot from the floor, stroking BELLA’s legs with it): Why not? Why can’t I change and grow and take what form best serves? Isn’t that what exceeding expectations, and setting new ones, is all about? What kind of dream would it be, if things always stayed the same? … I mean, you don’t like things always to be the same. I noticed that in just half a night.

BELLA: Funny.

HAMILTON: Bella, if we can be in two times at once, by dreaming, can’t we be two things at a time? What we hope to be and what we are, young and old, at once? And both always changing, growing. I mean, you are. So’s Will. Why not me? Do I _look_ crippled?

BELLA (rolling her eyes): Please, Ham. We’re still out of the dream.

HAMILTON (stilling his foot): Sorry. I can’t help it. It’s kinda what I do. That’s part of why being in the dream is better.

BELLA (after a pause): Ham, can I ask you something kinda personal?

HAMILTON (softly): If it was good tonight.

BELLA (after shooting him an exasperated glance): Ham, here in the dream, the rest of us are all stuck with these transparently pun-like names. “Will Krudski,” a guy overcoming his cruddiness by willpower. “Scout Calhoun,” a guy reconnoitering a path to the Senate. And “Jake Pratt,” your “acceptable ass,” in multiple senses of both words.

HAMILTON: That one’s particularly good, isn’t it? To say nothing of “Harry Johnson.”

BELLA: We’re so not going there! And then there’s “Finn,” a fish-like culture wonk who walks fully clothed into a lake that he teaches you to row on, tells you to listen to, then makes you swim in. And “Bella Banks.” I’m beauty, emotionally limited by the trauma of my mom’s abandonment. That’s so obvious Will’s written me poems about it, here in the dream. Even the name of the school’s a literary allusion.

HAMILTON: Yeh, so?

BELLA: What about you? 

HAMILTON: It's simple. I'm a ham - someone who enjoys acting, a joker, a trickster. And "flaming" - blatantly gay. A guy who enjoys pretending to be gay, because … (Wiggling his eyebrows:) I've got a jake prat.

BELLA: Obviously. But that's just the surface level. What about the deeper one?

HAMILTON: What makes you think there is a deeper one?

BELLA: Three things. First, you're paired with a girl whose name has two levels of meaning. Her being an "acceptable ass" doesn't just refer to her body's being the right gender for you, despite appearances. It also refers to her personality's being redeemable, despite her assinine behavior. The point is that she can be saved.

HAMILTON: And the second thing?

BELLA: The first level of meaning in your name implies that there's a second level. Because yes, you are a trickster, a guy who's never what he seems.

HAMILTON: And the third?

BELLA: Jacqueline never calls you "Ham." "Hammy" when she's being playful. Otherwise, always "Hamilton." Even in bed. And since the rest of us need to feel what Jacqueline feels, maybe we should understand why she does that.

HAMILTON (caressing BELLA's head, failing to repress a smile): Maybe.

BELLA: So … “Hamilton”? A hamlet on a hill? Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet? You don’t seem crazy. And “Fleming”? A guy from Flanders? Can’t be. Maybe flaming, like the angel with a flaming sword?

HAMILTON: Well, that’s what you kinda guessed yesterday, wasn’t it?

BELLA: Yeh, but it doesn’t seem quite right. Or to go with “Hamlet.”

HAMILTON: Why don’t you ask your husband? It was Will’s dream when we got those names.

BELLA: I have. He just says, “It’s supposed to sound WASP-like. Old-money New England.” And it’s old alright; “Hamilton” hasn’t been used much as a first name since the 1920s. But when I ask why Jacqueline never calls you "Ham," Will just shrugs.

HAMILTON: Well, nobody’s perfect.

BELLA: Rawley is. And you’re Rawley. The most important character in the dream. Too important just to shrug off. Sometimes I wonder whether Will really knows what he’s doing, or why.

HAMILTON: Does any of us?

BELLA: OK, so forget Will. Here in the dream, who named you “Hamilton”?

HAMILTON: My godfather, of course. Dr. Hotchkiss.

BELLA: But it’s not Latin. And it doesn’t sound like Greek. Does he know any other languages?

HAMILTON (smiling): Ya know, maybe that town scholarship …

BELLA (biting him gently, sliding a hand into his boxers): Ham, don’t make me do that. It’s fine for Will, or Mark, but that’s really not what I want to do with that, you know.

HAMILTON: Yeh, I know. … Hebrew, he knows Hebrew. Latin, Greek, Hebrew. A lot of teachers at schools like this did, once.

BELLA: So?

HAMILTON (looking up at JAKE, still sipping her coffee motionlessly): _Ha-miltanu_. Have we been saved?

BELLA: Excuse me?

HAMILTON (turning back to BELLA): Have we been saved?

BELLA: Uh … some of us. Not all of us. At least, not yet.

HAMILTON (removing her hand, kissing it): Well, then, we have work to do, don’t we? “Miles to go before we sleep.” Shall we go back into the dream?

BELLA: What about my question?

HAMILTON: What about it?

BELLA: Aren’t you going to answer it?

HAMILTON: I just did.

BELLA: Oh. … And “Fleming”? Is it “flaming”? From the Bible? Like the flaming sword, the burning bush, the chariot of fire, the altar of sacrifice?

HAMILTON: Maybe, but you’re missing the best part of it.

BELLA: Of your name?

HAMILTON: Of the Bible. _Song of Songs_. Go read it. Come on, let’s get up.

(HAMILTON lifts BELLA – viewed from behind by our ever-discreet camera – up to kneel astride his thigh, refastens the bottom buttons of WILL's shirt. BELLA stands, pulls HAMILTON up, kneels down to help him back into his jeans, gives his stomach a long, teasing kiss while re-zipping and re-buttoning them. He pulls her back up. They kiss affectionately, retrieve their coffees from the mantel, then return to their former positions by JAKE and WILL in front of the fire.)

BELLA: I think we were about like this, right?

HAMILTON: Yeh. And I’d just agreed with Jake that we should get going.

(The Nick Drake music resumes, the embers start to flicker again, and JAKE and WILL resume sipping their coffee.)

BELLA: Then let’s drink up and get dressed. First light’s only a couple hours off. Good thing we’ve got a boat.

JAKE: Will and Hamilton can take the boat, girl. I owe you a sled ride.

WILL: How does Mark pull this off, anyhow? I mean, the spa doesn’t open until nine.

JAKE: Will, that’s why he can do it now. Money can open up a closed facility for a private party. But it can’t close a public one.

WILL: Oh … yeh.

JAKE: And Mark’s so thoughtful. I mean, he pays them to shock the pool and change the filter before and after we use it.

WILL: Yeh , that is thoughtful. … But you’re talking like you’ve been there with him before. But you couldn’t have. You haven’t been back from Grottlesex since … oh … (Blushing, he looks nervously first at HAMILTON, then at JAKE.) … Uh, sorry.

JAKE: Will, it’s alright. Hamilton and I don’t have secrets from each other.

(BELLA shoots HAMILTON a furtive eye-roll.)

JAKE: And yeh, the Inn’s where Mark took me twice last summer while Hammy was still … dithering. Not the first time, but after that.

WILL: Mark didn’t like your outdoors spot?

JAKE: Oh, he liked it. Beautiful hilltop meadow under a maple tree, great view. I was the one complaining. For what we were usin’ it for, it had drawbacks. Ants, horseflies … nasty horseflies.

WILL: Gee, a new perspective on pastoral poetry. Thanks.

          “Come live with me and be my love”  
           And we shall all the pesticides prove …

BELLA: Yeh, inspiring.

          “But could youth last and love still breed,”  
           Had hills no ants, did flies not feed …

JAKE: Hey, don’t blame Marlowe or Raleigh. Back in the days of lice and fleas and bedbugs, who’s gonna notice a few horseflies?

HAMILTON: Great, another edifying literature discussion. Why don’t you girls go get dressed? Will and I’ll wash up.

(They all gulp down what’s left of their coffee. JAKE hands her mug to HAMILTON.)

WILL (taking Bella’s mug, kissing her sweetly): Don’t give up on them. They’re educable.

(JAKE and BELLA disappear into separate bedrooms. They boys enter the kitchen carrying the four mugs. WILL picks up the milk bottle, offers it to HAMILTON, who shakes his head. WILL drinks the remaining milk himself, looks at the bottle.)

HAMILTON: Old.

WILL: Yep. But everything old becomes hip. So, a souvenir. Of tonight.

(WILL sets the milk bottle down by the mugs, begin to wash them and the coffee pot. HAMILTON dries.)

BELLA (from a bedroom, loudly): It must cost Mark a small fortune to pay some Inn employee to get up before dawn, prep and open the pool, wait for three hours or so, then clean it.

JAKE (from the other bedroom): Yeh, it does. But don’t feel too bad. You’ll repay part of your debt to Mark every time you buy any of dozens of fine household or personal hygiene products.

BELLA: _That_ Johnson?

JAKE: Yep.

WILL (softly, to HAMILTON): God, it’s a wonder you could compete with that.

(HAMILTON sighs, shakes his head sadly, sets down his dish towel.)

HAMILTON: Come here, boy.

(HAMILTON turns WILL around, presses him against the sink, kisses him.

Fade out on WILL’s wet hands slowly, helplessly wrapping themselves around HAMILTON.)

 

*       *       * 


	5. Scene 2 - Sed revocare gradum …

INT - GRACE’S BEDROOM, ABOVE THE GAS STATION, NEW RAWLEY. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (FIRST LIGHT)

 

An upstairs bedroom. Two windows, hung with light blue translucent curtains, white wallpaper with a light blue floral pattern, glossy white paint trim on the windows and doors, a closet projecting out from a wall, light-colored antiqued wooden furniture – a twin bed, a night stand next to it, a dresser, and a dressing table with an oval mirror in a glossy white-painted frame above it – tasteful and elegantly framed pictures whose dominant colors are the light blue of the curtains and wallpaper pattern. No tacky teenage-girl stuff in sight. [Just as in episode 4 of the original drama.]

The room’s tidy and well-kempt. The dark green canvas roller shades are lowered. A copy of _A Tale of Two Cities_ , a bookmark protruding from near its end, lies on the night stand. Under the book is a manila folder. GRACE Banks sleeps in her bed, bits of her green plaid flannel nightgown sticking out from under a warm quilt.

An alarm clock on the nightstand next to GRACE’s bed, reading six-fifteen, rings. GRACE, moaning unhappily, fumbles with one hand to make it stop. She lowers her head back into her pillow for a moment, then turns her head to the side, opens her eyes, stands up, raises the shades to admit the feeble pre-dawn light, quickly makes her bed.

GRACE takes the manila folder from the night stand, briefly holds it without opening it, sets it on her dressing table, walks to the door, opens it.

Across the hall, the open door to BELLA’s bedroom reveals an empty, neatly made double bed, visible in the light let in by raised shades. GRACE looks at it for a moment, turns around, retrieves scissors and a comb from her dressing table, goes out into the hall.

 

*       *       *


	6. Scene 3 - Rosy-fingered dawn

EXT – NEW RAWLEY INN, DAY 6 – SUNDAY (FIRST LIGHT)

 

Establishing shot of the Inn in the first light of day – and of the setting, just-past-full moon, which at this hour still provides most of the natural light – panning in from across the Common, past the bandstand and Civil War monument – but with a detour to focus briefly on the old Congregationalist church. It’s Sunday morning, after all. Nothing stirs, even the birds and squirrels are still asleep. A few lights are on in the Inn, but it looks pretty dead, too.

 

 

INT – NEW RAWLEY INN, JACUZZI, DAY 6 – SUNDAY (FIRST LIGHT)

 

(The first feeble pre-dawn light trickles in through the floor-to-ceiling one-way window overlooking the lake. The only artificial light is from a low flame in the gas-fire hearth opposite the window. Over the bubbling of the whirlpool, _[Nick Drake: A Treasury](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treasury)_ , currently on “ _[Plaisir d'Amour](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzzTlGr7kxo)_ ,” plays softly from ceiling speakers. Three robes and three towels hang from the pegs near the door. The top of a plastic bottle of silicon-based lubricant pokes out of a robe pocket.

WILL, HAMILTON, MARK, JAKE, BELLA and ANNE huddle in the center of the pool, WILL and BELLA embracing each other, the others surrounding and caressing them. ANNE wears her ruby pendant on its new chain.)

BELLA (breathless, eyes closed): God … Thank you … That was …

MARK (softly, stroking BELLA’s head): Shhh … Just hold Will.

(BELLA complies, slowly opens her eyes. As she and WILL feast their eyes on each other’s faces and caress each other’s heads, the other couples disengage, allowing them some privacy. After slowly breaking into grins, then engaging in a brief bout of playful nipping, WILL and BELLA pull the others back to them.)

BELLA: So who’s next? Anne? … Or “Jake”?

JAKE: Slow down, girl. It’s your morning. Enjoy it.

BELLA: It’s our morning. Our first morning together.

WILL: And if it is Bella’s, then let her call the strokes. Let Bella and me be part of giving you and Anne what we just gave her. … Especially you, Anne. You and I …

ANNE (smiling, fingering her pendant): You and Bella and Mark and I will bond, boy. Slow down.

JAKE: Will, you guys are great, but could you really do that again … twice again … that well … without a little something for yourselves first?

WILL (blushing slightly): Uh … maybe not.

ANNE: Even if you could … that’s not the way we girls want to play it. … Is it, Bella?

BELLA: No, you’re right.

ANNE: And Will, today’s special, but what we just did – anything more than one couple just holding and helping another, in fact – has to be really rare. Or we’ll get addicted to it, and turn into some blob-like group instead of being couples. You guys can’t always give Jackie and Bella and me your collective best.

JAKE: That’ll be hard, even harder for you guys than for us girls, but we have to do it.

WILL: But Ham makes love to you, and Mark to Jacqueline, and your guys cooperate to give you both their best, every time you’re together … don’t they?

HAMILTON: We do, Will. But we kinda have to do that, because of what we’re doing during the weeks, while we’re separated.

MARK: Neither Ham nor I could love just one half of another couple without weakening it – even if it’s the guy half.

ANNE: It’s good – really good – but a lot of it’s dealing with guilt issues, with how we’re helping each other through being apart this year.

HAMILTON: That we can’t not do all that whenever we get together is part of why we only get together one weekend in three, at most.

MARK: And it’ll be like that until next year, when our girls are here.

ANNE: Will, what the four of us need most from you and Bella is help in becoming more … normal … next year, when Jackie and I are here. That’s the best reciprocation you could give us.

JAKE: Yeh. The weirdness of what the four of us are – separated, complicated, too intense and less straight than any of us really wants to be – is my fault. It’s great, for now, but it has to grow into something less weird, or it’ll stop being great. Help us?

BELLA: Sure. How?

HAMILTON: Just be yourselves. That’s what the four of us need from you and Will. Don’t try to be like what we are now.

MARK: Just be here for us until we can join you – not just in all being here, but in being more like you because we are all here.

WILL: We’ll be here.

BELLA: The garage, the diner …

WILL: Austen, Shakespeare …

BELLA: Burgers, Cokes …

WILL: … and you guys.

BELLA: ‘Cause you’re part of us. You always will be.

(HAMILTON, JAKE, MARK and ANNE pull in close to WILL and BELLA, kissing, caressing, and nuzzling.)

ANNE: So … are you mice ready for your cheese?

MARK: We’ve got to find a better metaphor … but “ready” is an understatement.

JAKE: We girls thought of something you guys might like …

HAMILTON (nibbling JAKE’s neck): Mmmm … girls’ locker rooms are hotbeds of creativity.

ANNE: More like the shower in the guest cottage … but I like what Bella and Jackie came up with. Trust us?

(The boys signal their consent with grins and kisses. The girls, crouching, only their shoulders above the water, take their boys’ hands and lead the boys, facing the center of the pool, to form the vertices of an equilateral triangle.)

ANNE: Guys, you’ll know when we’re ready. When we are, stand up, lean back and pull us taught. Let your pushing be ripples in your pulling.

(Each girl straddles her crouching boy, puts his hands on her hips, wraps her legs around him, raises her arms above her head, and slowly leans back, floating, until she touches the other two girls’ arms. The girls’ hands pull their way up one another’s arms until each clasps the others firmly by the upper bicep at the armpit. As they do so, the boys, to help the girls keep their heads above water, instinctively stand. The girls’ hips rise with them toward the surface.

Standing, each boy is presented with a view of all three lithe female torsos, faces and breasts floating atop the whirling water, lower abdomens slightly below the surface, and of his two male friends towering over their girls, firelight dancing over the moist contours of all in the first hint of dawn. Leaning back, the boys slowly pull the arching girls taught.)

HAMILTON: Botticelli was a piker …

WILL: “The love that moves the sun and all the stars” …

MARK: Hold that thought …

(For a moment, the boys just graze their fingertips across their girls’ abdomens and thighs; then they gently begin the dance.)

 

*       *       *


	7. Scene 4 - Hoc opus, hic labor est

INT - RAWLEY BOYS’, SCOUT’S & WILL’S DORM ROOM, DAY 6 - SUNDAY (DAWN)

 

The bamboo-slat blind on the window is lowered. Both beds are neatly made. A handwritten note on Rawley Boys’ stationery lies on SCOUT’s bed, paperclipped to the front of a paperback book propped against his pillow. The Beatles’ _White Album_  lies atop WILL’s laptop on his desk, his Jew's harp next to his shaving kit on his dresser, Benét and Thoreau on his nightstand. CHARLIE’s copy of _Little Women_ , bookmarked near its end, lies on the nightstand next to SCOUT’s bed, atop _The Annotated Christmas Carol_. Atop SCOUT’s dresser, two embroidered handkerchiefs now lie between his shaving kit and harmonica. Rawley-crest towels hang from hooks on the door to the corridor.

SCOUT enters from the corridor, in jeans, an open white dress shirt, an open parka, and loafers (no socks), carrying two rolled-up sleeping bags under one arm. He closes the door behind him, grabs a towel off a door hook, and disappears into the walk-in closet. The camera pans in on the note clipped to the book on SCOUT’s bed:

_Scout –_

_“True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed._   
_It is a committed, thoughtful decision …_   
_to contribute the utmost to another’s spiritual growth.”_

_Thank you for a truly lovely evening._

_Lena_

_P.S.: Took the liberty of perusing your shelves._   
_A bookshop on St. Martin – who knew?_

 

SCOUT emerges from the closet, wrapped in the towel, carrying keys, comb and wallet. He sets them on his dresser, spots the note on his bed, unclips it from the book.  As SCOUT reads the note, the camera pans in on the now-visible cover of the book, held in his other hand: _The Road Less Traveled_ , by M. Scott Peck. SCOUT smiles softly, puts the note inside a drawer of his desk, returns the book to the bookshelf near the door.

Outside, the chapel bell carillon starts to play the full Westminster Quarters and strike seven. SCOUT goes to the window, raises the blind. From a clear sky, the dawn light floods in. Outside, the tree branches have shed much of their snow.

SCOUT briefly looks out the window, then turns, gazes at WILL’s empty bed. He walks to it, sits on it softly, brushes the pillow lightly with the fingertips of his right hand. When the bells stop, SCOUT straightens, withdraws and clenches his hand. He stands, walks to his dresser, grabs his toiletries kit, opens the door, leaves.

  
*       *       *


	8. Scene 5 - Sweet sixteen

INT – NEW RAWLEY INN, JACUZZI, DAY 6 – SUNDAY (DAWN)

 

(The firelight is now drowned in the light of full dawn, wispy cirrus clouds glowing red in the sky above the still lake and mirrored in it. WILL, HAMILTON, MARK, JAKE, BELLA and ANNE huddle together in the center of the pool, each couple kissing, caressing each other’s heads, and gazing into each other’s eyes. The Nick Drake CD, looping, is now on “[Place to be](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IUqN9ozmhw).”)

After a few moments, the boys lead the girls the side of the pool opposite the window and sit on the ledge, their girls nestled on their laps, to watch the dawn. JAKE and HAMILTON sit on one side of BELLA and WILL, ANNE and MARK on the other, occasionally nuzzling or caressing BELLA or WILL.)

MARK: Thanks for bringing the music, Ham.

JAKE: Yeh, the McLachlan earlier was a nice touch, too. Kinda _déjà vu_.

BELLA: Did Mark play that for you here last summer?

MARK: If you bring it, they can play it. But we’re not quite to full closure yet, Ham.

HAMILTON (nuzzling JAKE): Mmmm … What more?

(MARK looks at JAKE, who smiles, nods.)

MARK: Feeding you to the horseflies out on Jackie’s hill next spring. There’ll be insect repellent for Jackie, Anne and me. For Will and Bella, too, if they’d like to come. But for you, boy – atonement is forever.

(HAMILTON smiles at MARK, starts to kiss JAKE. She eye-prompts him to kiss BELLA instead. HAMILTON complies, while ANNE kisses WILL.)

BELLA (breaking off, nestling back into WILL, looking out the window): Jacqueline, after you and Hamilton first made love, did you do anything like watch the dawn?

JAKE: Dawn never comes to a brownstone on the Upper West Side, girl. Remember?

BELLA: Oh, yeh. … Kinda like bein’ at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. … So what did you do afterwards?

JAKE: Cooked breakfast.

WILL: Wow, one tumble and Jake Pratt succumbs to an attack of domesticity. My compliments, Ham.

JAKE: Can it, Krudski.

HAMILTON: We’d been living on pizza and peanut butter for two weeks. Jacqueline hid that she could cook until after we’d made love.

WILL (after a pause, softly, to JAKE): You did it again, on purpose.

JAKE (shrugging): I gave Consuela some time off.

BELLA (to Will): They were already pretty smooth together in the kitchen a few days later, when I visited. … (To JAKE:) But apart from that … did anything change, Jackie?

JAKE: Everything. But not because we made love. We made love because everything had changed. When we were both facing our problems and doing everything we could to deal with them. When we didn’t need to avoid talking about them directly any more. When we were ready for simple honesty sometimes. For irony and playfulness to become optional, not obligatory.

WILL: Not much like you and me, is it?

BELLA: No. For us, it’s just a new way of giving each other what we’ve always given each other.

MARK: To have loved each other for ten years … no small feat.

ANNE: With Mark and me there wasn’t any “before” to change.

WILL: Love at first sight?

ANNE: No. Just sex at first sight, Will. But because Mark and I were both already in love. Not with each other. With Jackie and Ham.

MARK: Will, all that night, after Jacqueline introduced us, we said only four words to each other.

WILL: You’re kidding.

MARK: No. Just four. … (To ANNE, gently:) Hi girl.

ANNE (to MARK): Hi boy. … (To WILL:) Jackie had been telling me about Mark for days. All about him. Not just a load of crap about how great he is – although he is. Just as much about what he needed.

MARK: And Jackie’d told me about Anne all that evening. During dinner, she had Anne sit at another table, so that Anne and I could look at each other, while she talked about Anne. All through dinner, and after dinner, across a common room, I looked at a beautiful girl who was looking at me while she knew Jackie was stripping her naked, emotionally. It was … something else.

ANNE: Jackie didn’t have to tell either of us that she and Ham would come in the package. And Mark and I each desperately wanted to be part of what they are.

MARK: So when Jacqueline took me to her room that evening, and introduced me to Anne, and left, Anne and I said nothing, except those four words. By not saying more, we were telling each other that we trusted each other … because we trusted Jacqueline. That maybe we could really love each other – because we both love her and Ham.

WILL: Wow. … So you just went right at it.

MARK: No. We just said those same four words over and over – differently – all night. Because it took all night.

ANNE: Will, it was the first time for both of us. And we both wanted it to be … what it should be.

WILL: No way! … For you, Anne?

ANNE: God, why does everybody insist on treating me like some crazed sex fiend just because I’ve read a few books? I mean, I like everything.

MARK: Well, yeh, you do seem to.

ANNE: Not that everything. Everything everything. “Life, all of it.” … It’s just that, whatever I do, I try to do well.

MARK: You do. (He kisses ANNE.)

JAKE (nuzzling ANNE): Uh-huh.

HAMILTON (also nuzzling ANNE): Very well.

MARK (breaking off): Bella, when the dawn came, Anne and I did watch it. Then we went out and scraped Jacqueline off a couch in the common room, and pulled her into bed with us.

JAKE: And I was so happy. For Anne and Mark, for Hamilton and me. I really did not want to just lie there and think about Hamilton.

MARK: So the first words that Anne and I spoke together were mostly to Jacqueline … about Ham. About how we all love him … how good it would be with him.

BELLA: Perfect …

ANNE: It was a great weekend. But the next one, when Ham was there, was better. And it won’t be perfect till next year.

HAMILTON (kissing ANNE): You and Mark are perfect. Whether it takes ten years or ten weeks or ten hours… 

(A knock on the door.)

WILL (to MARK): Jen?

MARK: Uh - huh.

(WILL and BELLA exchange grins, then move quickly to the center of the pool. BELLA wraps her legs around WILL and they embrace tightly, BELLA facing away from the door, WILL’s face burrowed into her neck under her hair. HAMILTON, MARK, and ANNE suppress grins. JAKE shoots a questioning glance at HAMILTON, whose eyes slowly half-blink, telling her to wait and see.)

MARK: Come in, Jen.

(JENNIFER enters, carrying a serving tray on which are six coffee mugs, a small milk pitcher, and a sugar bowl, all bearing the book-and-crowns. She’s wearing a spa robe – to the evident surprise of HAMILTON and JAKE, but not of MARK and ANNE. Carrying the tray to the poolside near MARK, JENNIFER averts her gaze from the two unrecognizably intertwined bodies in the center of the pool.)

JENNIFER : Hi, Mark, Anne, Hamilton. And Jacqueline, welcome back. Long time no see.

JAKE: Thanks, Jenny. Too long. It’s good to be back.

WILL (turning toward JENNIFER as soon as she has set down the tray): What’s with the guest robe, Jen?

JENNIFER (her jaw dropping): Will? Bella? Oh my god … You two have finally … ?

(BELLA grins.)

WILL (also grinning, but blushing): Yeh. We have.

JENNIFER (to MARK): Why didn’t you tell me?

MARK: Not my place to do that, Jen. More Bella’s and Will’s.

JENNIFER: This is so way, way overdue … Mark, may I?

MARK: Of course. Nice of you to prep the pool and bring us coffee, but you’re here as Anne’s guest this morning. Come on in.

(JENNIFER walks to the rack of robe pegs, and, her back to the pool, disrobes, looks over her shoulder at BELLA and WILL, smiles. As she turns to enter the pool, our ever-discreet camera pans in on the appreciative faces of HAMILTON and WILL. JAKE and BELLA exchange, first, amused eye-rolls at the mesmerization of their guys, then, noting that MARK is nonchalantly pouring some milk into a coffee mug, glances of puzzlement.)

JENNIFER (kissing first WILL, then BELLA, then hugging them both): About time.

JAKE (taking a coffee mug from MARK): Way past time.

(JENNIFER looks WILL up and down. He blushes even more deeply.)

JENNIFER (to BELLA): Glad I didn’t steer clear of him for nothing. … (Looking first at JAKE and HAMILTON, then back at BELLA and WILL:) Jacqueline and Hamilton?

BELLA: With some help from Mark and Anne.

MARK (to JAKE and HAMILTON): Your reputation has preceded you.

JENNIFER (looking at WILL and BELLA, awed): Wow! … (She hugs them and kisses WILL again, then looks at HAMILTON, finally at JAKE.) May I?

JAKE (rolling her eyes at HAMILTON): That seems to be what he’s there for. … (To JENNIFER:) I’m kinda learnin’ to share.

JENNIFER (to JAKE, after gliding to HAMILTON, ogling him, drowning in his eyes for a moment): Really?

JAKE: Go for it, girl.

(JENNIFER pulls a delighted HAMILTON to her and kisses him with everything she’s got. Reluctantly disengaging, she shakes her head to clear it, smiles at JAKE.)

JENNIFER: Take good care of that one.

WILL: Jacqueline, do you just know Jen from here at the Inn, last summer?

JAKE: Yep.

WILL: Well, Jen’s also one of the smartest and kindest girls in Edmund High’s freshman class. If you hang out with Bella and me next year, you’re likely to see more of each other.

JENNIFER (grinning at JAKE): Kinda poorly phrased, Will, don’t ya think?

WILL: Uh … yeh. But you know what I meant.

MARK: You meant that they may become better acquainted. But somehow I think they may not have to wait till next year.

(MARK – to the astonishment of HAMILTON, JAKE and BELLA – lifts ANNE onto his lap, pulls JENNIFER onto the ledge next to him, puts his arm around her, kisses her lightly.)

MARK: Coffee, Bella?

BELLA: Uh … yeh, thanks. Milk and lots of sugar.

HAMILTON: One for me, too, please, Mark. No milk, no sugar, one story.

MARK (reaching back to fix BELLA’s coffee): Will and I suggested to your dad that he send Brandon to the Langtree’s for Thanksgiving dinner, Ham. Thought he and Jenny might hit it off.

JENNIFER: And we have.

BELLA (to MARK): The Brandon you introduced me to at the gas station Wednesday? Your roommate? The guy who kindly asked me to dance at the Rawley summer cotillion … after my date ditched me to chase another girl?

WILL: Ow! … Hey, not my fault. You were really there for Scout.

BELLA (taking her coffee from MARK): Yeh, I know. Were we dumb or what? Thanks, Mark. And Jen, best wishes.

JENNIFER: Thanks for helping Mark get us together, Will.

WILL: My pleasure. I’m glad it worked out.

BELLA (kissing WILL’s temple): Well done.

JENNIFER: And Hamilton, thank you for getting Sean together with Mark’s sister.

HAMILTON: You’ve heard about that from Brandon?

JENNIFER: From him and Anne and Mark.

(HAMILTON arches an eyebrow at MARK and ANNE.)

MARK (holding out a mug): Coffee, Will?

WILL (taking it): Thanks. I need it. Badly.

JENNIFER: Sorry, Will. I should have been here earlier. I was kinda … detained.

(JAKE and HAMILTON exchange uneasy glances. MARK, handing a mug to ANNE and taking the last mug for himself, exchanges a smile with her.)

HAMILTON: Yeh … Where is Brandon, by the way?

JENNIFER: In the sauna.

ANNE (with mock casualness): As my guest. Like Jenny.

(MARK joins ANNE in smiling sweetly at JAKE and HAMILTON. JAKE and HAMILTON again exchange glances, now even more uneasy. BELLA looks at WILL, plainly worried.)

JENNIFER: And that’s where I’ll be, if you want more coffee. Come join us if you like. (She flashes an inviting smile to everyone, lingering on JAKE and HAMILTON.)

ANNE (kissing JENNIFER lightly): Thanks. We may.

JENNIFER (disengaging from MARK, kissing WILL’s forehead:) Be good, boy. … Hamilton, Jacqueline, thanks for whatever you did to get these two together. And Jacqueline, again, welcome back.

JAKE (tepidly): Thanks, our pleasure.

(JENNIFER climbs out of the pool, puts her robe and sandals back on. JAKE and HAMILTON exchange pursed-lip, narrow-eyed looks and settle onto the pool ledge opposite MARK, ANNE, WILL and BELLA.)

JENNIFER (leaving): See ya.

WILL: See ya, Jen. … (To BELLA): You didn’t tell Jen about your scholarship.

BELLA: I’ll tell everyone at school tomorrow. (She nods her head toward JAKE and HAMILTON, prompting WILL to defer to the obvious problem.)

HAMILTON (icily): So, Anne, was Jenny “detained” in the sauna, ya think?

ANNE (still mock-casual): In my room, I suspect.

JAKE: Uh -huh. And she and Brandon have been there since …?

ANNE (sweetly): Yesterday evening.

JAKE (to ANNE): You and Mark were feeling a little jealous, maybe?

MARK (also mock-casual): Maybe. But Brandon is my roommate. Why is that, by the way, Ham?

HAMILTON: Uh … because he didn’t seem too sensitive … and you did. I coulda been wrong about that last part, though.

MARK: And you were hoping maybe I’d make him more sensitive?

HAMILTON: Something like that.

MARK: I’ve been kinda handicapped. And Jennifer could do it a lot better. Especially with a little help.

JAKE: Cut the crap, Mark. Just tell us you and Anne didn’t screw them.

MARK: We didn’t. We just shared Anne’s very large bed.

ANNE: Neither of them gave either of us anything near so nice as the snogging Jenny just gave you, Ham.

HAMILTON: Keep sharing a bed with them and they will.

ANNE: Hamilton, they know about us. They don’t want to come between us. I told Jen about you and Jackie … about all of us … Thursday evening. And Jen told Brandon.

JAKE: Anne, he’s a football-jock homophobe who’d never eat with Mark and me last summer.

MARK: Jackie, he'd never eat with us partly because he saw I was attracted to you, and you were attracted to Ham.  He didn’t want me to get hurt, and I couldn’t tell him what was going on.

JAKE: Oh …

MARK: Jen’s close to Bella, Will and Sean. And Brandon’s my roommate. It’ll help bind all of us. Besides, Ham, we owe Brandon. I’ve been a crappy roommate.

HAMILTON: We get that. And your getting them together’s great – well done. But you don’t share a bed with another couple without talking to us first. 

ANNE: Ham, yesterday after dinner, when Mark and I came back here, Jennifer was working the spa, and Brandon was here. He’d had dinner here and was waiting to walk her to his room after her shift. Jen had already agreed to open this pool for us early this morning. And Brandon’s such a gentleman, he’d have gotten up with her to walk her here.

MARK: So rather than make Jen and Brandon trudge to the boys’ school and back on a winter night, Anne and I invited them to stay with us. Jenny accepted – on condition that she not be paid to open the pool for us this morning. But we’re not the couple they want most to get close to. You are.

ANNE: Ham, Jackie – we told them last night that you’d be here this morning. We think Jen chose to stay here as our guest last night at least partly so that she could meet you two this morning as an equal, not as an employee.

JAKE: So you want us to accept the invitation of a girl who’s obviously hot for Hamilton to go sauna with her and her insensitive, muscle-bound boyfriend.

BELLA: Jacqueline, your story’s out. More girls than not, even girls with great guys, will be hot for your boyfriend. I am, so’s Anne. So what? We all want him to stay with you, because if he doesn’t, the hottest thing about him, namely how well he loves you, shatters. Deal with it.

MARK: There’s more, Jackie. As you know, four of our JD rowers are second-years. We’ll lose them to the senior division next year. I mentioned that to Brandon Friday morning … after he’d heard your story … and he’s told Finn he’d like to row meat wagon instead of playing football next year. Finn’s delighted. So if you’re gonna cox us again …

JAKE: Oh god … How bad is he, Anne?

ANNE: Not bad at all. Great in some ways. He’s really gentle, affectionate, totally huggable. And he tries to be kind. He’s just … not real sensitive.

BELLA: Pretty much my impression, too.

WILL (to JAKE): He’s nowhere near so bad as Ryder. And you were willing to deal with Ryder yesterday.

JAKE: Yeh, and I still am. … Hamilton?

HAMILTON: Your call.

JAKE: Will the four of you come with us?

BELLA: Sure, if you and Hamilton want. I’d love to. But that’s pretty obviously not what Jen and Brandon would prefer.

MARK: Give them a chance. Jen’s delightful. And Brandon’s educable.

WILL: Anne, Bella, Mark and I’ll be right here in the next room. If you want us, come get us. We’ll gladly join you.

JAKE: Maybe. … Mark, will you room with Brandon again next year?

MARK: I wouldn’t mind. But we haven’t discussed it. And since yesterday, I’ve had other plans.

HAMILTON: News to me. What plans?

MARK (looking at HAMILTON): Well, there’s this guy I really, really like. And we both really, really like each other’s girlfriends. I’m kinda hopin’ to room with him next year. Unless he thinks his mom would turn his room at home into a sewing den. … (To WILL:) And with you and Scout, if you’ll have us.

WILL: Mark – Scout and I’d love to share a quad with you. With you and Ham, if you can bring him. With you and Brandon, if you can’t.

HAMILTON: He can’t. … Mark, I can’t really ask the parentals to let me live in the dorms. Rooms on campus are scarce, my taking one could keep some guy from attending Rawley, and I don’t really need one. Besides, Mom and Dad want me around, and after everything they’re done …

ANNE: Ham, you won’t have to ask. Brunch yesterday was interesting.

MARK: Yeh, I didn’t raise the subject. Your dad did.

HAMILTON (burrowing into JAKE’s neck): Oh god … and I tried to be so quiet …

JAKE: You really don’t understand your dad, boy.

HAMILTON (briefly looking up at JAKE): Like you really understand your mom?

JAKE (replying HAMILTON’s barb only with her eyes): How’d the Dean do it, Mark?

ANNE: How would you do it, Jackie, if you were him, talking with Mark and me?

JAKE (after brief consideration): I guess I’d start by saying how lucky my son’s girlfriend is to have such a nice roommate.

MARK: So far so good.

JAKE: Then maybe I’d point out that my son’ll need a room on campus next year, if he’s gonna have a girlfriend enrolled here. ‘Cause I can’t be seen to favor my own son, letting his girl sleep at my house all the time, while all the other boys have to jump through the hoops of not getting caught in the dorms.

ANNE: Not bad. Except you left out the part about how much you and your wife like your son’s girlfriend, and would rather have her in your home with you all the time, if you could.

JAKE: Then maybe I’d just wonder out loud whether my son had thought yet about who he might room with.

MARK: Ever consider a career in school administration, Jackie?

(HAMILTON lifts his face from JAKE’s neck.)

JAKE (smiling at HAMILTON): And then I’d pretend to be pleasantly surprised when the guy who’s been taking care of my son for his absent girlfriend, and with whom my son is obviously half in love, says he’d like very much to room with my son.

ANNE: Yep. Sounds almost as if he was young once, doesn’t it?

HAMILTON: Dad really did that?

MARK: Yeh, but the bad news is, he’s right about Jackie. Your folks really like having her around. But when she’s here as a student, they can’t let her stay at their house more often than other girl students can visit boyfriends at home. Just free weekends and holidays. The rest of the time …

HAMILTON: I’ll be stuck with you?

MARK: We’ll be stuck jumping through hoops together.

WILL: What about Brandon, Mark? He may miss you. Will he be OK next year, roommate-wise?

MARK: I think so. His closest friends are on the football team. He said last night that he’s trying to talk one of them into switching to crew with him. If he pulls that off, I think they’ll want to room together.

WILL: Who?

MARK (grinning): Stewart Prescott.

HAMILTON (laughing): We’re in luck.

WILL: For sure. Has anybody told Stewart yet who’s likely to be coxing JD crew next year?

MARK: Not yet. Brandon probably assumes no girl could cox boys’ crew. I thought I’d let Jackie and Ham enlighten him. … (To JAKE:) Sound like fun?

JAKE: Maybe.

MARK: That could help Brandon persuade Stewart more than anything else we could say. … So maybe a more urgent question, Will, is whether _you’re_ gonna be OK roommate-wise for the rest of _this_ year.

WILL: I hope so. Scout and I would like to stay together. And Ham has places that Bella and I can use sometimes, without rubbing either Scout’s or Grace’s nose in it.

MARK: I know Ham’s places. For him and me, they’ve been great. But for you and Bella, I think we could do better.

WILL: How?

MARK: I’d be happy to switch rooms with you on nights when you and Bella get together. On other nights, you could still room with Scout, and I could still room with Brandon.

ANNE: Mark and I talked with Jen and Brandon about it last night.  

MARK: We mentioned that Jackie and Ham were on Bella's case ... 

ANNE: And they seemed to get that you and she might get together soon.  With Bella and Jen and you being close friends, Brandon and Jen think it would be great to share a room with you and Bella. When Jen’s not with him, he’d be happy to crash with friends … like Scout and Mark.

MARK: So Will, if you and I want to switch rooms, however much you need to do that, Brandon will be there for you. And Bella, the hoops we’ll have to jump through are manageable. Finn will turn a blind eye if a couple is discreet, if he thinks they’re good for each other and treating each other and everyone else right, and if the girl’s parents have told him they consent.

WILL: But what about you and Anne, Mark? Do you plan to keep using the Inn next term?

MARK: Sometimes. But we have Anne’s parents’ blessing, so she and I’ll share my room with my roommate and his girlfriend sometimes. And you and Bella are always welcome with us in my room – whether Jen and Brandon are there or not. So are Jackie and Ham.

BELLA: Mark, you and Anne will want to be alone sometimes. And with just Ham and Jackie sometimes.

MARK: Yes, but on those nights, we’ll be at Grottlesex, or at the Inn.

(WILL looks questioningly at BELLA.)

BELLA: Will, it’s way more normal than Ham’s solution. And if Jen, Mark, Anne and you all like Brandon, I’m sure I will, too.

MARK (to WILL): And I’ll be there for Scout most nights when you’re not.

WILL: Thanks, man.

MARK: For offering to room with Scout Calhoun? _Il n’y a pas de quoi, mec_.

BELLA: Anne, Mark, thank you. Not just for Will and Scout and me. For Jen, too. … Jacqueline, I’m sorry if Mark and Anne have hurt you and Hamilton, but …

JAKE (softly): We get it, Bella. … Mark – you and Anne spent the night with Jenny and Brandon partly so that they wouldn’t feel hurt when you suggested switching roommates. So that you could help Will and Scout and Bella without making Jenny feel unwelcome … didn’t you?

MARK: Who said all the cute ones are dumb, Anne?

ANNE: Hey, not me, boy.

(JAKE and HAMILTON look at each other.)

JAKE (to MARK): You win. We’ll go sauna with them.

MARK (to ANNE): Beating them at their own game is even more fun than making them jealous, isn’t it?

ANNE: I kinda think it’s the only way we really _can_ make them jealous, boy.

MARK: Could be. … But I believe in omens, don’t you, Ham? I mean, after you and Will and I talked about Will and Bella and Scout and Grace yesterday afternoon at the girls’ school, finding Brandon and Jenny here last night, and wanting to get close to you and Jackie … that was kinda like looking up and seeing mistletoe over our heads.

HAMILTON: Yeh, right.

JAKE (to HAMILTON): Shall we?

HAMILTON (standing, pulling JAKE up with him): Sure.

BELLA (pulling WILL toward MARK and ANNE): Will and I’ll try to work on Anne and Mark’s jealousy problem while you’re gone.

WILL: Yeh, but try not to detain Jenny too long, Ham. I’m gonna need more coffee.

ANNE (nuzzling WILL): Not to worry. Brandon’s not the long-detaining type.

BELLA (shifting from WILL to MARK): That really has to change.

MARK (pulling BELLA to him): Well, we can all work on that.

WILL (pulling ANNE to him): Yeh, we can. … Hi, girl.

ANNE (placing WILL’s hand on her pendant): Hi, boy.

(JAKE and HAMILTON exchange eye-rolls and turn toward the stairs.)

BELLA: Oh, Hamilton?

HAMILTON (turning back): What, Bella?

BELLA: Sixteen. It is sweet, isn’t it?

 

*       *      *


	9. Scene 6 - Thanksgiving Yet to Come

EXT - FRIENDLY’S DINER – DAY 6, SUNDAY (DAY - EARLY MORNING)

 

The snow-covered rooftops of New Rawley’s main street glisten in the rays of the rising sun; the pavements, still surrounded by high snowbanks, remain in shadow. The street is quiet, nearly empty of vehicles and pedestrians, most businesses closed. 

Across the street, at CHARLIE’s gas station, the 1950-vintage green pickup truck continues to rest by the hedge near the service bay. A second similar vehicle, inside the service bay, remains visible through the eye-high row of windows in the cantilevered doors of the service bay.

SCOUT Calhoun, in a parka, arrives to work as waiter for the breakfast shift. The door’s unlocked. Before entering, SCOUT casts a glance across the street at the gas station, sees no one there.

 

 

INT - FRIENDLY’S DINER – DAY 6, SUNDAY (DAY - EARLY MORNING)

 

(SCOUT, after entering the diner, continues to look across the street, out the window, as he hangs his parka. He’s wearing his dark blue Friendly’s-uniform polo shirt.

Unnoticed by SCOUT, SEAN McGrail, in open parka and the same flannel shirt he wore Saturday, reads the sports section of  _The Boston Globe_ and drinks coffee in a rear both. Otherwise, the diner is empty, save for a cook in the kitchen, occasionally glimpsed through the food pass-through.)

SEAN (folding his newspaper): Grace is there, working in the service bay. And good morning.

SCOUT (laughing, walking behind the counter): ‘Morning, Sean. That obvious, huh?

SEAN (smiling, rising, moving, with his coffee, to a counter stool): It was pretty obvious yesterday evening at Fanny’s, guy.

SCOUT (beginning to set up the counter): Grace and I enjoyed the lobster rolls. And the company. Would you like some breakfast? It’s on me, if you would.

SEAN: Thanks, I’ll eat later, after mass with my folks. Brunch at my house with Liz, Mark and Anne. But I’ve made some coffee. Have some with me?

SCOUT: Sure, thanks. … (Taking a mug off a rack and pouring himself a coffee:) So, you’re here just for the pleasure of my conversation?

SEAN: Partly.

SCOUT (sipping his coffee): And partly …?

SEAN: To tend the gas station, if you’d like to invite Grace over here for breakfast.

SCOUT: McGrail, you’re a prince. And I’m already in your debt. I wasn’t ready to see what I hear we missed yesterday evening at the dining hall.

SEAN: Bella and Will, together with Jacqueline and Hamilton and Mark and Anne, while your whole school went nuts over them? Guy, I wasn’t quite ready for that yet, either.

SCOUT: Giving up Bella still hurts?

SEAN: You, of all people, need to ask?

SCOUT: And Liz knows that?

SEAN: Yes, and she’s getting me over it fast.

SCOUT: I’m glad. It was good to see her so happy.

SEAN: Partly because you were with us, and happy. If you really want to thank me, don’t be a stranger to Liz. She misses you.

SCOUT: Sure. It’ll be easier now. Four days ago, Liz was a girl I’d been a jerk to. Now she’s a friend’s girlfriend.

SEAN: Scout … if you could stand in for me with Liz a little during the day, at your school … like at lunch … just to be there, a guy who cares about her … 

SCOUT: My pleasure. … And Sean, what you and Anne did for Mark and Liz yesterday afternoon - helping them past the twin problem - that was well done, guy. Really well done.

SEAN: What you’re trying to do for Ryder and Lena’s not shabby either, prep.

SCOUT: You’ve talked with Lena?

SEAN: If you don’t want a girl to talk, you shouldn’t make her insanely happy and then leave her alone. … Lena phoned Ham while he and Jacqueline were visiting Liz and me yesterday evening.

SCOUT: I hope that visit went well.

SEAN: Very well, eventually. But before that, weirdly. Starting with how Liz dealt with Jackie’s apology.

(SCOUT cocks an eyebrow.)

SEAN: Liz shut her up by kissing her – hard – then told Ham and me to go downstairs and stay there till she phoned me. When we came back up with some coffees, Jackie and Liz were, well …

SCOUT: Good friends?

SEAN: Yeh. … Mark tried to warn us, but I didn’t get it until it happened. I don’t think Jackie did, either.

SCOUT: That Liz has a tomboy side, and isn’t shy about using it? Comes with having a twin brother. 

SEAN: Not just that. How attracted Jackie and Ham are to Liz, and she to them – because of Mark. The twin thing doesn’t just work on Anne and me.

SCOUT: Tell me about it. … So you felt a little left out?

SEAN: All three of them made sure I wouldn’t. I became the entertainment.

SCOUT (amused): Two straight girls can always bond better with a little male help. Feel useful?

SEAN: Useful is not what I was feeling. And Fleming didn’t have to be so wickedly useless.

SCOUT: You know they were thanking you for helping Liz and Mark. And I’m sure you got payback.

SEAN: Oh yeh. And for that Fleming was useful. But they made me wait, like, forever.

SCOUT: Until you begged?

SEAN: Way past that.

SCOUT: And your relief had a price.

SEAN: You know Fleming.

SCOUT: Well. So what’s your penance?

SEAN: You think promises made under torture are binding?

SCOUT: Whatever they teased you into promising them, you’ll like. So what was it?

SEAN: To try out to row with you next summer, when Edmund’s not in session.

SCOUT (elated, grabbing SEAN’s hand): That promise is definitely binding. And you’ll make the crew, no question. It’ll be great to have you with us.

SEAN: Thanks. I’m looking forward to it. Meat wagon, like you. … Ham said I’d be the first Edmund guy ever to row for Rawley.

SCOUT (releasing SEAN’s hand): It’s only been two years since Ham’s dad and mine finally got the interschool agreement through Rawley board. And crew is year-round, rowing on machines when we can’t on the water. And it’s just … so prep. Your beer buddies will rib you about this.

SEAN: All the more reason to do it, diner waiter.

SCOUT (smiling, resuming his counter set-up work): Can you play baseball and row too? Will had a problem with that last summer.

SEAN: Will was going to school, too. I won’t be. And Will wasn’t the baseball team captain. I set the practice times.

SCOUT: And in the fall? You can’t do two sports when your school’s in session.

SEAN: We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

SCOUT: You won’t have a female bedmate on your football team. And your girlfriend has been known to enjoy helping a guy unwind after rowing practice.

SEAN: The possibilities were pointed out to me at length last night.

SCOUT: Lovely girls, aren’t they?

SEAN: They are. And there’s another waiting to have breakfast with you. If you’ll give me two coffees to go, I’ll send her over here.

SCOUT: Two?

SEAN: Yes, please. Black for me. Milk in Liz’s. She’s going to mass with me.

SCOUT (pouring the coffees): She’s meeting you at the garage?

SEAN: No, she’s already there. With Grace.

SCOUT: Oh god … talking about …

SEAN: The weather, I’m sure. … Relax. Your last girlfriend and your next girlfriend are bonding over a guy they both really, really like. A guy Liz and I both would like to be close to, when Grace is ready.

SCOUT (handing SEAN the two coffees): It’s mutual, Sean. Please thank Liz for me.

SEAN: Why don’t you do that yourself, next time you see her?

SCOUT: I will.

SEAN (standing): And Calhoun, promise me something.

SCOUT: What?

SEAN (fastening his parka): That during the next few minutes, you’ll engage your brain before opening your mouth.

SCOUT: What, I seem socially incompetent?

SEAN (picking up his two coffees): Far from it, buddy. But even competence can use a little help sometimes. So promise me.

SCOUT: Alright, I promise.

SEAN (going to the door): Good. See ya’ when I see ya, Scout.

SCOUT: See ya, Sean.

(SEAN crosses the street, between gaps in the snowbanks, to the gas station. SCOUT removes SEAN’s mug, wipes the counter, uses the glass panel in the door to the kitchen as a mirror, flips a lock of hair back off his forehead, and goes into the kitchen.

Across the street, seen through the diner’s front windows, SEAN enters the gas station office. GRACE and LIZ, both wearing parkas, GRACE also wearing a baseball cap, enter it from service bay. SEAN kisses LIZ lightly, hands her a coffee, smiles at GRACE, chats briefly with her. A car pulls in to buy gas, MARK and LIZ set down their coffees and go out to service it. GRACE pulls up the hood of her parka, picks up a manila folder from the office desk, shouts thanks to MARK and LIZ, crosses the street, enters the diner.

SCOUT, hearing the door bell, emerges from the kitchen, while GRACE sets her folder down and hangs her parka, facing away from him.)

SCOUT: ‘Morning, Grace.

GRACE (turning to face SCOUT, deepening her voice): ‘Morning, Scout.

(GRACE’s hair is cut to about four inches long. She’s wearing baggy blue denim jeans, an open blue denim jacket, a blue baseball cap, sneakers, and a plaid flannel shirt over a flattened chest.

SCOUT’s jaw drops. He starts to speak, but then closes his mouth, smiles, nods.)

SCOUT: I’m glad you’re here. Have a seat.

GRACE (removing and hanging her cap, picking up the manila folder): Thanks. (She takes a seat on a counter stool, sets the folder down on the stool next to her, nearer the door.)

SCOUT (putting a placemat and silverware in front of GRACE): Would you like a menu?

GRACE: No, thanks. … (Looking into SCOUT’s eyes:) I know what I want.

SCOUT (returning her gaze): So do I. But I’m gonna have to wait. Guess I don’t have to ask whether you’re willing to.

GRACE: Not blind, not stupid, thinks before speaking. I could do worse.

SCOUT: Spoken like a true romantic.

GRACE: Romance can wait – if you insist.

SCOUT: I do.

GRACE: I know. And Scout, it’s romantic that you want to wait for me.

SCOUT: Ya know, it’s weird, but the guy gear … it’s gonna make waiting harder.

GRACE: Scout, nothing could make that harder for me.

SCOUT: Not for you - for me. I mean it makes it harder for me.

GRACE: That’s the point, whatever-it-is-you-are-to-me.

SCOUT: Then ya wanna tell me how it does that? 

GRACE: Maybe when I was dressed as a girl, you never dreamed of turning me into an older girl by kissing and stripping me, ‘cause you knew that’s not possible. But now maybe you imagine turning the guy I’m dressed as into a girl by doing that …  ‘cause you know that is possible, right?

SCOUT: Uh, yeh.

GRACE: But is the girl you imagine me turning me into fourteen years old?

SCOUT (smiling): No, she’s not. The fourteen-year-old girl is gone. I gather she won’t be back?

GRACE: Nope. She gets in the way.

SCOUT: Clever.

GRACE: But I can’t go out in public with you like this. Something’s missing.

SCOUT: What?

GRACE: Our protection.

SCOUT: Excuse me?

GRACE: Our protection from sound-bites and headlines like: “Senator’s son dating cross-dressing underage girl.” I don’t think your family would be thrilled with me if I let that happen.

SCOUT: Good point.

GRACE: So I think I’ll have to wear something that says that I’m a girl, don’t you?

SCOUT: You’re right. Makes it less fun, though.

GRACE (removing her jacket): Not necessarily. What I have in mind isn’t a hair ribbon.

SCOUT: What is it?

GRACE: This. (GRACE stands and turns to face away from SCOUT. Taped to the back of her shirt is a cardboard sign reading:

 

**UNDERAGE GIRL**

IN DRAG

TO HELP BOYFRIEND

**W A I T**

SCOUT cracks up laughing.)

GRACE (over her shoulder): Think that’ll do the job?

SCOUT (recovering): Oh yeh. … You’d wear that?

GRACE (turning back to face SCOUT): If you’ll take me out wearing it.

SCOUT: Miss Banks, you have a deal.

GRACE (putting her jacket back on): And if your father saw a picture of us in a newspaper?

SCOUT: He’d say you’re hilarious. And brilliant. But he already knows that.

GRACE: You talked to him … about me?

SCOUT: About us, Grace, with both my parents, on my way back to school after dinner last night. And they won't have to wait for a news photo to see this. We're invited to Greenwich next weekend and … well, you're coming.

GRACE (sitting back down): Thanks. … But why should I wear this sign in Connecticut? I mean, you and I'd be legal there now.

SCOUT: Because it's you, Grace. It's bold, brilliant, and funny. You're making it safe for me, even though I’m a Calhoun, to go out in public with an underage girl - by turning it into a joke. My parents will love it. The Greenwich Country Club will love it. The Senate Dining Room will love it.

GRACE: Thanks for the reminder. I was planing just to sew or stencil the words of my sign onto the backs of some jackets and sweatshirts. But I'm gonna need a sport jacket and tie, aren't I?

SCOUT: Several. And a suit, and more. But for next weekend, one blazer and two ties will do. Will you let me spend money on you?

GRACE: If it'll help me learn how to help you do what Calhouns use money to do.

SCOUT: Then this afternoon, when the stores open up, would you mind doing some clothes shopping alone? I'd enjoy going with you, but it should be done soon, to allow time for tailoring. And I should be at school today for the snow-sculpture judging, and for Jacqueline and Ham. Things could still go sour.

GRACE: Then be there, and give them my best. What would you like me to buy? 

SCOUT (pulling out his wallet): The most androgynous grey or dark blue woman's sport jacket or blazer you can find, and two solid-color man's neckties. The rest can be guy stuff if you can't find guy-like women's stuff - a pair of black or dark grey straight-legged dress slacks, a black dress belt, a pair of black dress shoes, two sweater-vests, and two white, button-down-collar dress shirts.

GRACE: Sounds doable. But why a woman's jacket and the preference for guy-like woman's stuff?

SCOUT (handing her a credit card): To break the rules as little as we need to. One piece of men's clothing, a necktie, is enough to turn an androgynous woman's outfit into drag.

GRACE (taking the card): Got it.

SCOUT: So the neckties are where you'll wear the words of your sign where you're out with me in a sport jacket. Have a tailor embroider them - with all the words all above the sweater-vest on one tie, but running farther down the other tie. And while you're there, have him sew your sign onto the back of one sweater-vest and a couple of sweatshirts. I'd like to help you stencil your jacket myself.

GRACE: Thanks.

SCOUT: But you'll be spending as little time as possible in those neckties.

GRACE: So that no reminder that I already am a girl will intrude on your fantasy of turning me into one?

SCOUT: Who said all the cute ones are dumb?

GRACE: So … that girl you imagine turning me into – how old is she, Scout?

SCOUT: Hmmm … Your dad didn’t get Bella a double bed till she turned sixteen.

GRACE: My sister didn’t wait for that bed, as you well know. And I’m not talking about my dad’s permission – you spoke with him about that yesterday.

SCOUT: Seemed appropriate.

GRACE: And he tossed the ball back into your court – where it’ll stay, so long as I don’t screw up.

SCOUT: And then there’s the law …

GRACE: You and I’d be legal now in Maine, New Hampshire, or Rhode Island - as well as your home state. They're all just an hour or two away. And the age of consent on St. Martin is fifteen. We’d be legal there at Christmas break.

SCOUT: You’ve done your homework.

GRACE: It took, like, five minutes online. … Scout, you don’t need excuses to wait till you think I’m ready. I just wanna know how long you need to wait.

SCOUT: Until you’re ready. I’ll know when it happens.

GRACE: I’m not asking when you think I’ll look and feel old enough to you. I know you can’t predict that. I also know that, if I cried on your shoulder or did or said something you think is really sweet or witty, I might look and feel old enough now, at least long enough for you to do something you’d wish you hadn’t.

SCOUT: So what are you asking?

GRACE: How old I’d have to be for you not to feel weird sleeping with me, or crappy about it afterwards. No matter how old I looked and acted, you’d think you shouldn’t sleep with me now, when I’m fourteen, wouldn’t you? And if you did, you’d be ashamed afterwards, right?

SCOUT: Uh, yeh. Which is kinda weird, ‘cause when I was fourteen …

GRACE: Yeh, but you’re not anymore. I'm just asking how long you want my help with not letting that happen. 

SCOUT (after a pause): Then Grace, will you please go to a dance with me?

GRACE: Maybe. Whadya have in mind?

SCOUT: Rawley summer cotillion, next July. You’ll be fifteen and a half.

GRACE: Do I get to wear a dinner jacket?

SCOUT: There’s nothing I’d rather take off you, Grace.

GRACE: Then it’s a date.

SCOUT: Great. … Would you like some breakfast?

GRACE: Yes, but could we wait? Sean and Liz have a while before they go to mass.

SCOUT: Sure, no problem. Coffee?

GRACE: Yes, please … black, until the cotillion.

(SCOUT grins, takes down two mugs, pours coffee into them, sets one down on the counter, carries the other out from behind the counter, and sits on the stool next to GRACE farther from the door.)

SCOUT: And what else, until then?

GRACE: You get to play Pygmalion. Will says you’re good at it.

SCOUT: Grace, each of us sculpts himself. Nobody else can do more than help.

GRACE (drinking): Good help is hard to find. And you come highly recommended.

SCOUT: I’m serious.

GRACE: So am I. Scout, you’re trying to love everybody, to help all the people like me become more like you. That’s why you like gas pump girls, why you like Will, why you work at this diner. I’d like to try to love you back, for all of us. To do that, I’ll need to learn how to help you use what you’ve got that I don’t have to help all of us. Can you help me learn that?

SCOUT: Sure. We'll spend weekends together. I'll still do a few shifts at the diner. And we'll have dinner and study together a couple evenings a week.

GRACE: You can do that - get out of your study-hours lockdown?

SCOUT: If we really study. 

GRACE: We will.

SCOUT: And I’ll get you some newspaper and magazine subscriptions. Read them, we’ll discuss. We’ll go to Rawley social functions, including the alumni ones – I’ll ask Dean Fleming to give us some work to do at them. I’ll get you some books to read over Christmas break. And we’ll spend most of the break together. Here, I can crash at the Flemings'. In Greenwich, you can stay with me.

GRACE: In separate rooms.

SCOUT: It’s a large house.

GRACE: So I’ve heard. … Thank you.

SCOUT: And we'll do some serious clothes shopping in New York. We can do this, Miss Doolittle. And I’ll enjoy it. But for you, it’ll be a lot of work, and not much fun at first.

GRACE: Oh, it’ll be fun. My makeover will let everyone know that you’re a crazy selfless saint, and they’ll go out of their way to help us.

SCOUT: Cute ploy. But a selfless saint I’m not.

GRACE: You’re planning to be alone for eight months.

SCOUT: Starting as soon as I can wrap up with Lena without leaving her alone. You, Lena and I agreed on that yesterday afternoon.

GRACE: Yeh, but neither Lena nor I knew then how quickly you planned to wrap up with her. We thought you’d stay with her for a few months, while Ryder got his act together – not bring Ryder in with you and her now, so that he’ll be ready for her faster, leaving you alone longer.

SCOUT: Seems like the right thing to do, Grace. And how’d you hear about that already?

GRACE: From my new fashion icon and her boyfriend. Lena phoned them after you told her what you planned to do with Ryder, while they were visiting Liz and Sean. So they came by after that. And Lena came by later, after you and Ryder left her. … None of us wants you to be alone for eight months – and that's not just pity.

SCOUT: Grace, I’ll wait with you. Otherwise it’s meaningless.

GRACE: No, it’ll only be meaningless if you don’t think about me – or, rather, try to think about what you hope I’ll be eight months from now. That’ll be hard.

SCOUT: Your makeover will make it easier. Has Jacqueline seen it?

GRACE: No, I did it this morning.

SCOUT: Where’d you get a binder?

GRACE: Uh … it’s Jacqueline’s. After Lena told us, yesterday afternoon, that Jacqueline had given it to her … When Lena  phoned last night to ask if she might come by, I asked if I might borrow it for a while. So she brought it with her.

SCOUT: I kinda suspected that.

GRACE: Break it to Jacqueline gently?

SCOUT: I’ll try.

GRACE: Thanks. … (She gulps the rest of her coffee.) … You know, she and Hamilton would like to make it easier for you, too. Before they left last night, they gave me some things they said I could give to you.

SCOUT: What?

GRACE (picking up the manila folder): Invitations.

SCOUT: Oh no …

(GRACE opens the folder, pulls out four notes written on small sheets of _Rawley Rag_ stationery. )

GRACE (reading the notes in quick succession, then placing them on the counter-top): “Scout – Please join us, here or at Grottlesex. – Love, Jacqueline and Hamilton.” … ”Dear Scout – Anytime we’re together, we’d like you with us. – Anne and Mark.” … “Scout – Don't be a stranger. – Jan, Alice, Fred & Steve.” … And this particularly interesting one: “Scout – Be our fourth Wednesday nights. – Will, Hamilton and Mark.”

SCOUT: Oh god … Grace, I can’t …

GRACE: Wait. Lena gave me two more. … (Pulling out a note written on small sheets of Rawley Academy for Boys stationery, reading:) “Scout – Please stay with us until Grace is ready. We’d really like to have you with us. – Lena and Forrest.” (GRACE sets the note on the counter atop the others.)

SCOUT (muttering): I leave them alone for five minutes, I get a conspiracy.

GRACE (pulling out another note on Rawley Boys’ stationery): This last one’s a bit different: “Dear Grace – If Calhoun is too proud to stay with Lena and me, please persuade him to spend a couple nights a week with me until you’re ready for him. It’s something I’d like to do, and the only way I can think of to try to show you I’m truly sorry for having been such a cad. – Best wishes, Forrest Ryder”

(GRACE tears the notes into shreds, stuffs them into the empty mug.)

GRACE (pushing the mug toward SCOUT): You have friends, boy.

SCOUT (standing, walking behind the counter): I do. But I’m waiting with you, Grace.

GRACE: Maybe you should think about it.

SCOUT (emptying the mug into a trash bin): I don’t need to do that. … (Setting the mug by the sink:) And I don’t want to do that.

GRACE: I know. You want to offer me a dramatic sacrifice like what Hamilton offered “Jake.” As I said, that's romantic. I'm floored that you want to do that for me. But is it really the best thing to do?

SCOUT (pouring GRACE a fresh mug of coffee): Grace, we are not discussing this. I’m waiting with you, period. (He sets the fresh mug on the counter.)

GRACE: I’m not sure that’s really an option, Scout. If you don’t find a way to make the best of a bad situation, your friends may do it for you. They like you, they’ll feel sorry for you, and they’ll know I don’t object. After you’ve been alone for a month, will you be able to resist a full-court press from Ham and Jacqueline? From Mark and Anne? From Sean and Liz? … Or from Will and my sister?

SCOUT: Oh crap. … You’re right. I couldn't even resist a serious seduction by Ham and Mark, which I’d get every Wednesday. … But that last one, Will and Bella, I hope you would object to.

GRACE: Strenuously. I don’t want you that close to Bella until you and I have been together a while. But if you angst around for eight months, Will and my sister are likely to jump you. 

SCOUT (retaking his seat next to GRACE): I know. Will and I are as scared of that as you are.

GRACE: I'd like nothing better than for us to be close to Will and my sister. But not as a foursome. As two close couples.

SCOUT: We will be. And you’ll finish getting me over Bella. Like Amy got Laurie over Jo.

GRACE: You finished _Little Women_?

SCOUT: Close enough to know why you lent it to me, whatever-it-is-you-are-to–me. Thank you.

GRACE : You’re welcome. … And yes, this could be wonderful. Ham and Jacqueline told me the part of their story that you and Lena left out yesterday, about them and Mark and Anne. They told me what you’re all trying to build. They want us to be part of that. I want us to be. Don't you?

SCOUT: Yes, very much.

GRACE: Then let's focus on doing that - on loving each other and the people who need us - not on making a dramatic sacrifice. 'Cause our friends are telling us that's not what they want from us. … What is? What made Hamilton and Jacqueline and Lena come and spend time with me last night? What's making Sean and Liz cover the pumps for me this morning?

SCOUT (after a pause): They want us together, and with them.

GRACE: Yes. There are needs other than ours in play, Scout.

SCOUT: And I haven't been thinking about them … or yours. Forgive me?

GRACE: Scout, there's nothing to forgive. You've been busy helping Forrest. Like you helped Will and tried to help Bella last summer. Like you're helping me. You give your love where it's needed. You don't need to imitate Hamilton. You're already like him - and he loves you.

SCOUT (taking GRACE's hand): Thanks.

GRACE: I'm just the messenger. And that message was very clear. Hamilton and Jacqueline want you with them - soon.

SCOUT: I know.

 GRACE: And my sister is offering you her boyfriend. That's all that you and I can take from Will and Bella right now, and if you don't take Will, they'll be hurt.

SCOUT: My pleasure. 

GRACE: And you can't walk away from Ryder for half a year. He's hurt, and last night you became the first real lover he's ever had. That's a commitment, Scout. And it's not just about Lena.

SCOUT (nodding): So how do we do this?

GRACE (withdrawing her hand): In whatever way makes you feel least weird.  

SCOUT: Grace, really to make love to you, I do want to wait till next summer.

GRACE (sipping coffee): And I just agreed to help you.

SCOUT: But to give you what a girl your age should be getting - which is totally legal - I'd enjoy not waiting. And for all of us - you, me, and our friends - I shouldn't wait.

GRACE: Eight months of "heavy petting"? With a girl still shedding baby fat? … Aren't you a little past that? 

SCOUT: Try me.

GRACE: You wouldn't find that … difficult? And not very romantic?

SCOUT: Our friends will make it romantic - and I doubt they'll leave us much choice. … After Christmas break, when Ryder doesn't need my help with Lena, and Jacqueline's here most weekends … whenever we're with them, if we're not together yet, they'll try to pull us together - with them.

GRACE: That occurred to me in Hamilton's and Jacqueline's arms last night. And in Sean's and Liz's this morning. They'll try to jump us together before they jump you alone.

SCOUT: And if I, alone, took any of those invitations from couples - which I really don't want to do - the first time would be about bonding, but after that … it would be limited, and about teasing me into bringing you in with us. 

GRACE (smiling faintly): Probably. 

SCOUT: And I want us all to spend time together. The Pygmalion thing will work way better with more sculptors, including some girls. Our friends will all want that too. But If we can't mess around a little, it'll be awkward.

GRACE: Then we'll start after your Christmas break. When I'm fifteen, and our friends are back here. But only with them - not alone.

SCOUT: What, you think we need chaperones?

GRACE: Couldn't hurt. Once you get me going, my promise to help you wait's gonna fly out the window.

SCOUT: Grace, I've done this before.

GRACE: Alone, with a girl who wasn't a virgin? And who wasn't, like, teaching you - who was really into you?

SCOUT: Uh, no.

GRACE: Think about it. … And you'll feel less weird about enjoying it if we're doing it partly to love friends who need us, and with their support. You said it yourself - our friends will make this romantic.

SCOUT (after a pause): OK, only with friends, at least at first. … But why only after Christmas break?

GRACE: Because you are not getting past these guy rags while I'm still fourteen, boy. 

SCOUT: You could be really helpful the next two weekends, with easing Ryder into being alone with Lena. You saw Forrest's note - he's desperate for forgiveness.

GRACE: He'll get it. I've already sent Forrest an e-mail asking him to stop by when he can. And I'd enjoy hanging out with him and Lena. But the way he hurt me is by not bedding me when I wanted him to, Scout. And I can't let him make that right till next summer. 

SCOUT: You don't want to be with Lena and Forrest till next summer?

GRACE: I do, when he and Lena are a couple. But I'm not the girl you need to help Forrest trust himself with Lena. … For the next three weeks, if you want a fourth for Forrest and Lena, take Alice or Jan. Steve and Fred won't be here, Will is taken now, and Hamilton, Jacqueline, Will and Bella plan to make sure Josh is with Caroline.

SCOUT: Is there anything you  _don’t_  know?

GRACE: Lots. I’m bursting with questions. But Will wanted me to know that my sister hasn't left him uncared for. So Alice and Jan helped him tell me about it. And Ham and Jacqueline updated me last night. … Why don't you be a gentleman and take care of Alice and Jan till Christmas break?

SCOUT: Both of them?

GRACE: With Forrest and Lena, one at a time. But with Will, Mark and Hamilton I think you could handle both of them. And if I know my sister, Anne, and Jacqueline, your next three Wednesday nights might turn out to be unexpectedly straight. 

SCOUT: Oh …

GRACE: And Scout, when they’re convinced that Ryder’s changed … your friends will be all over him and Lena. And they’ll want you in on that.

SCOUT: Oh god … you’re right again. When Fleming gets over his blind spot about Forrest, he’ll come on to him like a freight train. And yeh, he’ll pull in everybody. A command performance. And it’ll be so good for Forrest …

GRACE: And you’ll want a partner - especially if Will and Bella are there. But not me, if it happens before Christmas break. Could you ask Alice or Jan to be ready for that? 

SCOUT: For sure, thanks. … (After a pause:) How do you do it?

GRACE: What?

SCOUT: See things like that. Know my friends better than I do.

GRACE: I haven’t been raised to be a politician. If you don’t see your friends well, maybe it’s because you always keep one eye on what most people do. It’s part of what you sacrifice for all of us, including me. And that’s enough, Scout. You don’t need to give up anything more.

SCOUT (leaning in): I would so like to kiss you right now.

GRACE (pulling back): No, you wouldn't. I'm fourteen, and I'm not the partner you need to help you do what you have to do during the next few weeks. 

SCOUT: Your fifteenth birthday, December twenty-first? I'll be here. We could invite Liz and Sean, or Jacqueline and Ham, or both.

GRACE: No. The first time that any of our friends will need us, or that we'll need them, is after your Christmas break.

SCOUT: Not true, Grace. I'll need you at New Year's, in Greenwich.

GRACE: To kiss at midnight?

SCOUT: For that, and for Jacqueline and Hamilton. They'll be there, with Ham's parents, for a few days.

GRACE: And it's something you and Hamilton have looked forward to all your lives.

SCOUT: Ham told you?

GRACE: Jacqueline did, a little - as Hamilton sat me on his lap, held me, put my head on his shoulder, nuzzled me, stroked my arm, while she unbuttoned his shirt, put my hand inside it, and looked into my eyes across his chest. … You gave me an unforgettable first night, boy - without even being here. 

SCOUT: Surprised?

GRACE: No, just overwhelmed. I've seen it before. Like what Mark and Anne have done for my sister … the way she sinks into their arms when they show up. But to feel it myself … 

SCOUT: It's just what you should have been getting from some nice guy your own age for the past year. Why haven't you?

GRACE: I was afraid I'd be like my mom. Hurt any guy I got close to. So I blew off the nice ones my age and went for guys I couldn't hurt much, or who'd hurt me first. Older guys … jerks … preferably hot older jerks.

SCOUT: Grace, you've never been like that. Irresponsible, yes. Malicious or even uncaring, no. 

GRACE: I know. … I've learned that by being surrounded, this semester, by guys I couldn't imagine myself hurting. Guys I wanted to keep from being hurt. Guys who all seemed to trying to be unimaginably kind, all the time … like you and Sean becoming friends to help Will and Bella … partly by helping me … like it was some game you all couldn't stop playing.

SCOUT: It kinda is.

GRACE: I get that. And now I know why. … But to be held by the spark that lit this fire … 

SCOUT: It’s what they do.

GRACE: They love you. So much that on the night when every kid in your school wanted to be with them, they came by to be with me. So unconditionally that they committed to me just because you’d committed to me. The message was that they’re part of the package.

SCOUT: They are.

GRACE: Where does that come from?

SCOUT: From our parents, Ham’s and mine. They’ve been close since university. Ham and I’ve kind of inherited that closeness.

GRACE: Weird, Scout. Beautiful, intense, good … but weird.

SCOUT: It is. There’s not a word for it.

GRACE: “Whatever-it-is-you-are-to-each-other”?

SCOUT: That’s already taken.

GRACE: So where was Ham last summer, when you were trying to get over my sister? And why didn’t he tell you about Jake?

SCOUT: There were a couple of years when we weren’t so close. Including last summer.

GRACE: What happened?

SCOUT: I’ll tell you when Ham’s with us.

GRACE: Oh … sex. Ham told me to tell you that you could tell me about his first. That was you?

(SCOUT, chagrinned, nods.)

GRACE: So tell me.

SCOUT: It happened three Augusts back, at my family’s place on the Cape. … (Briefing grazing Grace’s hand with his own:) What sparked it was girls, of course. Always the root of all guy problems.

GRACE: Misogynist.

SCOUT (smiling): Girls and a bit more. Our dads had been reading us a really depressing history about how the first democracy basically committed suicide.

GRACE: Thucydides?

SCOUT: You’ve read it?

GRACE: No, but I’ve heard of it. So you were bummed?

SCOUT: Very. Ham held me and talked to me.

GRACE: About democracy?

SCOUT: About death, rebirth, second chances, growth.

GRACE: That’s not sex.

SCOUT: No, it’s love. … And the day before it happened, our parents went out and Ham’s mom left her easel on the porch. A storm came up, the board was ruined. So I walked into town and got her a new one. … Ham’s mom looked into my eyes and kissed me, saying I’d make some girl very happy someday.

GRACE: You’re already doing that.

SCOUT: I’ll do better. … When we went to bed that night, Ham looked into my eyes the same way and told me she was right.

GRACE: You shared a room?

SCOUT: Whenever our families got together. Always had. And a bed, until a year earlier, when it became obvious we’d have to choose between being either less close or a lot closer. We weren’t thrilled about that. I’d always been his, he’d always been mine, totally. It was a given.

GRACE: That’s still not sex.

SCOUT: Nothing gets past you townies, does it?

GRACE: So what’d you do?

SCOUT: The obvious thing. Chased girls together. The next day we went out with two. Ice cream sundaes in town, a little swimming and making out in the dunes. My girl was less into it than Ham’s was. He got quietly pissed, put his shirt on and politely ended it. Then he walked me to the marina, and we took out one of my family’s sailboats. Small, but it has a cabin.

GRACE: Ah, sex.

SCOUT: Yeh. We dropped anchor in a nearby cove. Ham took me down into the cabin and kissed me. Our first real kiss. No words, but it was clear – he wanted to comfort me after a girl had rejected me.

GRACE: And you messed around.

SCOUT: I made love to him.

GRACE: Did you hurt him?

SCOUT: Not physically. I’ve never done the kind of stuff that could – and don’t plan to.

GRACE: So what was the problem? Ham obviously wanted something to happen. Didn’t he like it?

SCOUT: The problem was that I did too much, and Ham liked it too much. I gave him my best, I couldn’t not. … And he was overwhelmed. He had no clue. I was way more experienced.

GRACE: At thirteen?

SCOUT: Unlike Ham, I, thanks to my grandfather, went to an all-boys' middle school - Deerbrook. Just grades six through nine, and no girls' school attached.

GRACE: Totally gay?

SCOUT: Totally repressed. But unlike Ham, I got fully twenty-two weeks a year off school. And unlike Ham, I spent my breaks mostly in Connecticut, where sex is legal as young as … ?

GRACE: Thirteen, with a partner under sixteen.

SCOUT: Right. So after I turned thirteen, I persuaded a few bored fifteen-year-old girls home on break from other schools with pretty much the same calendar to … educate me. I'd started lining one up when I was still twelve.

GRACE: You must have had quite an act.

SCOUT: I just asked to be taught how to give well, to girls my own age, what I could rightly give a girl my own age - which wasn't everything, obviously. I said I was content to keep my pants on and take care of myself afterwards, alone, until I'd learned enough to be with girls my own age. But when I'd shown that I'd really meant that, then sometimes …

GRACE: The older girl liked you, and gave you advanced lessons?

SCOUT (nodding): I got a very nice thirteenth birthday present. And by the time Ham kissed me, when I was almost fourteen … 

GRACE: You were competent. So why wasn't your girl at the beach into it?

SCOUT: I wasn't doing the usual thirteen-year-old-guy stuff. Instead, I was showing her how much could be done just with her neck, her arms, her sides. She found that disconcerting, but she was ready for more a couple days later. Unfortunately, I was busy dealing with a guy who was way more disconcerted.

GRACE: Ham was scared?

SCOUT (nodding): Of being gay, of falling in love, of getting in my way, of screwing up my family’s plans for me.

GRACE: Scout, you were really dumb.

SCOUT: I know. … I hurt him, and I lost him. He quietly freaked out over the next few days, obviously terrified, and we avoided each other until we both started summer session at Rawley this year.

GRACE: But you two are OK now?

SCOUT: He forgave me, even blamed himself after he learned the ropes. … (Faltering:) When I got here … at the start of summer session … his apology present was in my room.

GRACE: What?

SCOUT (voice cracking): Will. Hamilton had Will and me assigned as roommates. He gave me Will, knowing he’d be perfect for me. To replace himself as the guy closest to me, because he thought he’d been a jerk to me.

GRACE (placing a hand on SCOUT’s forearm): Oh, Scout …

SCOUT (eyes tearing): Ham came by our room first day of summer session. I was so ashamed that I couldn’t deal with it in front of a stranger – Will. So Ham actually introduced himself to me as if we were strangers … and I let him. I pretended not to know him, Grace.

GRACE: Scout, it’s OK …

SCOUT (sniffling): No, it’s not. Will figured it all out and said nothing until a few days ago. He knows I’m a coward and a liar. … And I tried to steal the girl he pretty much told me he was in love with. … And he loves me anyhow.

GRACE: And Hamilton loves you.

SCOUT (recovering slightly): I know. When Liz dumped me, Ham was there for me. But this time I really was hurt, and he knew what he was doing.

GRACE: I’m sure he does. Jacqueline seems very happy. And everyone else at your school is happy for her this morning. They’ll be happy about a lot of things. Including Forrest and Lena, and you and me. So why aren’t you? You’re a Calhoun, people need you, and you’re wallowing in self-pity.

SCOUT: Sorry, Grace. It’s just that …

GRACE (withdrawing her hand): You so desperately need a girlfriend.

SCOUT: No joke.

GRACE: Not just Susan and Wendy. Lena mentioned your night with them to me, even if you didn’t.

SCOUT: Grace, I just …

GRACE: It’s cool, Calhoun. You helped Ryder pay them back a little, and I’m sure your thirteenth birthday present was well used. But it’s only cool because I’m fourteen. Do that without telling me first when I’m sixteen and we’ll have our first eunuch senator.

SCOUT (grinning): Yes, ma’am.

GRACE: And not just your two fourth-year divas that you and Will spent Thanksgiving night with. Will did tell Bella about that, even if you haven’t told me.

SCOUT: Grace, you and I had no commitment then.

GRACE: A technicality. But we’ll let that slide because your love affair with your perfect roommate moved them to let their boyfriends come back here.

SCOUT: You’re all heart.

GRACE: You’d better believe it. And not just Lena, whom you were going for only hours before you committed to me.

SCOUT: That was a prior commitment.

GRACE: And I’ll help you make good on it, with pleasure.

SCOUT: I’m glad you like her.

GRACE: I like all your lovers. Especially the other three guys in your steamy gay Wednesday night foursome. Wanna tell me when the last time was that you held the guy you’ve been whining about having lost three summers back, while his cute boyfriend took him over the edge?

SCOUT (sheepishly): Wednesday night.

GRACE: Uh – huh. But despite the best efforts of at least five girls and four guys you’ve very recently bedded, you’re still feeling guilty and inadequate and sorry for yourself. Because only with a girl you really love can you give the people that you love, and think you’ve hurt, what you need to give them. And start building with them what you’ve always wanted – what your parents have with Hamilton’s.

SCOUT: That’s not why I want you, Grace.

GRACE: What, a girl who’s eight months too young isn’t the best you could find for that? … But we'll start with Hamilton and Jacqueline, at New Year's. It sounds perfect.

SCOUT: It will be.

GRACE: And you might think about a limo to some largish cabin in Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island or Connecticut for the weekend after your summer cotillion.

SCOUT: Really?

GRACE: The bad news about these guy rags and my sign is that I have to keep on wearing them, in Massachusetts, till I turn sixteen. To wear a commitment to not breaking the law and then stop short would be dumb. And to break it while I'm still wearing it would be even dumber.

SCOUT (smiling): You're right.

GRACE: But the good news is that you can take us all to your house on that topless beach on St. Martin next August.

SCOUT: If you’d like that, yes.

GRACE: I’m just sorry I can’t help you do that now. But I can listen while you whine and wallow in self-pity. You don’t do this crap with anyone else, do you?

SCOUT: No.

GRACE: Then maybe I’m good for something.

SCOUT: You’re good for way more than that. But tell me, please, that you don’t think I’m a skank.

GRACE: No, just I think you like sex. A lot.

SCOUT: Seriously.

GRACE: Of course I don’t. I’m the one who was a skank. You’ve handled some bizarre situations really well. You’ve helped a lot of people. It’s what you do. And I’m thrilled to be the one you want to do it with.

SCOUT: Thanks, Grace.

GRACE: But we all really do need to make this way more normal, when we can.

SCOUT: I couldn’t agree more.

GRACE: So is the future Senator still offering breakfast?

SCOUT (standing, going behind the counter): Of course. What’ll you have?

GRACE: A ham and mushroom omelette and orange juice, please. Join me?

SCOUT (scribbling on an order sheet): Sure.

GRACE (after a pause): Scout … what’s it like?

SCOUT (skewering the order sheet on a spindle in the pass-through to the kitchen): The omelette?

GRACE: To be truly loved.

SCOUT: Oh. … Why are you asking me?

GRACE: ‘Cause Jacqueline said I should – when I asked her last night.

SCOUT: In front of Hamilton?

GRACE: Uh – huh.

SCOUT: That’s bold.

GRACE: She said you asked her the same thing Thursday night, after you parked her sled at the girls’ school. In the snow, under the full moon, overlooking the frozen lake. Sounded very romantic.

SCOUT (wincing): In front of Ham …

GRACE: He loved it. Especially the part about how you teased an answer out of her. Holding her from behind, nibbling her neck, unfastening her parka, telling her how hot she was in a blazer and tie …

SCOUT: That’ll do!

GRACE: So what’d she say?

SCOUT: “He fumbles at your soul.”

GRACE: Ewww … Not very complimentary. No wonder she didn’t want to repeat it with Ham there. In front of him she said she’d given you a poem.

SCOUT: Grace, that is a poem.

GRACE: Ah … a mistake not to make twice.

SCOUT: Distrusting Jacqueline? Yes.

GRACE: So who’s the poet?

SCOUT: Poetess. Emily Dickinson. Would you like to hear it?

GRACE: Yes, please.

SCOUT (pulling a mobile phone out of a trouser pocket, walking around the counter to GRACE): My pleasure. … (Fiddling with his phone:) But what Jacqueline feels with Ham … you may not feel with me.

GRACE: We’ll have to see, won’t we? … You find the poem?

SCOUT: Yes. Close your eyes, whatever-it-is-you’ll-be-to-me.

(GRACE shuts her eyes. SCOUT stands behind her, almost but not quite touching her, speaking in a soft, slow, lover’s voice, his lips almost brushing her neck:)

SCOUT: He fumbles at your Soul  
             As Players at the Keys  
             Before they drop full Music on –  
             He stuns you by degrees –

             Prepares your brittle Nature  
             For the Ethereal Blow  
             By fainter Hammers – further heard –  
             Then nearer – Then so slow.

             Your Breath has time to straighten,  
             Your Brain to bubble cool –  
             Deals – One – imperial Thunderbolt  
             That scalps your naked Soul.  
 

*       *       *


	10. Scene 7 - Red-hots and a fairy tale

INT – NEW RAWLEY INN, JACUZZI, DAY 6 – SUNDAY (DAY - EARLY MORNING)

 

(Outside, snow-covered trees bordering the lake cast long shadows in the sunrise. On the still-looping Nick Drake CD, “[Northern Sky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq7dHnlmniU)“ plays softly. A serving tray slightly different from the last one JENNIFER was seen bringing lies as the side of the pool near the fireplace, opposite the window. On it are two fresh full mugs of coffee. Four empty mugs are scattered along the window-side edge of the pool.

WILL, MARK, BELLA and ANNE are all seated together on the ledge of the window side of the pool. Or rather, WILL and MARK are seated on the ledge, facing each other, with BELLA on WILL’s lap and ANNE on MARK’s lap, totally close and making out while their guys clasp each other’s arms, pressing their girls together and nuzzling them from behind. The entanglement looks like it would be quite uncomfortable, indeed barely possible, without the weight-reducing effect of the water. At poolside, next to them, lies a neatly folded guest robe – only two robes now hang from the row of pegs near the door.

HAMILTON and JAKE, settling into the pool near its stairs, apparently having just re-entered it, regard their intertwined friends with amused curiosity, and move toward the coffee tray.)

JAKE (to HAMILTON, grinning): Innovations in jealousy management.

HAMILTON (fixing a mug of coffee – milk only, no sugar – for JAKE): Yeh. Don’t let us interrupt, but when you come up for air, Anne, ya wanna tell us what the Sanskrit name for that is?

ANNE (pulling her mouth free of BELLA’s, smiling at BELLA): No Sanskrit name. This isn’t mine.

JAKE (taking her coffee from HAMILTON, nodding her thanks): Really? Who’s the creative genius?

BELLA (smiling at ANNE): Will.

(WILL, incongruously, blushes. BELLA and ANNE re-engage.)

HAMILTON (taking the second mug of coffee, black, and approaching the group): Hidden talents, Will?

WILL: Uh, no. Not mine, really. Michèle’s and Denise’s.

JAKE (approaching the group alongside HAMILTON): Who?

HAMILTON: Scout’s and Will’s French friends on St. Martin. The Calhouns’ beach house there has a whirlpool.

JAKE (drinking): Looks kinda uncomfortable for the guys. Isn’t it?

MARK: Yeh, but It, uh, has its compensations. Wanna try it? With Will and Bella?

HAMILTON (also drinking): Uh, thanks, no.

MARK: Doesn’t sound like the guy I know. You startin’ to age, Ham?

JAKE: You just don’t train him hard enough, Mark. That’s why I have to cox again next year. … (She sets her mug down poolside, sits on the ledge, leans against MARK’s back.) That help?

MARK: It might, if Ham’d do the same for Will.

HAMILTON: Happy to. … (He sets his mug down poolside, sits on the ledge, leans against WILL’s back).

(WILL and MARK relax their grips on each other’s arms, leaning back against HAMILTON and JAKE.)

WILL (stroking BELLA's sides): Thanks. … Soooo much better.

MARK (reaching back with one hand to caress JAKE’s head): Yeh. … So how’d it go with Jen and Brandon?

JAKE: You didn't find out when the coffee was brought?

MARK: Give us a break.  Jen's compulsively kind, but we sent her back to you as fast as we could.

JAKE (nuzzling MARK’s arm): You and Anne really don’t know?

ANNE (breaking off from BELLA): Know what?

HAMILTON: Jenny and Brandon left …

MARK: No way. What went wrong?

JAKE: They left so that we could be alone with Steve and Alice and Fred and Jan, who were all there waiting for us, with Brandon and Jen.

(WILL, MARK, BELLA and ANNE exchange smiles and quickly disengage by falling off the ledge together.)

WILL (re-emerging from the water): How’d that happen?

HAMILTON (sliding across the ledge toward JAKE): Fred and Steve have a room here at the Inn. For college guys to overnight at the girls’ school is seriously frowned on. And for male alumni …

WILL (mockingly): “That’s just not done.”

HAMILTON: Exactly.

JAKE (sliding across to meet HAMILTON and nestling into him): So Jan and Alice spent the last two nights here with them.

HAMILTON (wrapping his arms around JAKE): And somehow … (Looking at MARK and ANNE:) Jen and Brandon seem to have known about my relationship with Jan and Fred and Alice and Steve – and how much they and I looked forward to bringing Jacqueline into that.

ANNE: If it was a secret, it’s not anymore, Ham. You all kinda flaunted your closeness yesterday.

JAKE: It’s cool. … And Jen, working here at the Inn, knows the few guests here now. Not being brainless, she figured Jan and Alice might be here with Steve and Fred.

HAMILTON: So this morning she and Brandon rang their room, told them that Jacqueline and I were here, rustled them up a breakfast in bed, and brought them down to the sauna.

JAKE: Then Jen came in here and staged her “please come join us in the sauna” act with Hammy. ‘Cause they wanted to surprise us.

WILL (spooning in behind BELLA, facing HAMILTON and JAKE): So were you surprised?

JAKE: Oh yeh. Not least by how sweet Brandon is. Given a little time and help, he’ll be fine.

BELLA: I thought he and Jen left.

JAKE: We didn’t let them split right away – although they tried to. And Mark, before they did leave, your roommate gave Hammy a very affectionate thank-you for taking care of you.

MARK (pulling in behind ANNE): Really?

JAKE (pulling HAMILTON down into the water, closer to the other couples): He’s been worried about you. I’m sorry I’ve come between you.

MARK: Jackie, you’ve also brought us closer together. Way closer than we’d ever have been without you. Stop apologizing, please.

HAMILTON: Brandon and I have a date for Tuesday afternoon.

WILL: Teaching him how to turn a guy into a girl?

HAMILTON: Taking him out in a coxless pair. Our football season’s over, so he’ll start working out at the boathouse with us. The three of us and Scout might take him out in a four a few times before the lake freezes over for keeps.

MARK: If you and I aren’t suspended.

HAMILTON: Let’s hope for the best.

JAKE: And Jen’s taking Hammy to a meeting of Edmund’s photography club Thursday afternoon.

BELLA: She’s a member?

JAKE: No, but one of her friends is, and Hamilton’s calendar has drawn compliments.

BELLA: Uh – huh. And by Thursday, all of Edmund will have heard the story … and Jen will selflessly keep Ham safe from the Edmund girls for you.

HAMILTON: Nobody said you can’t help. And Jacqueline and I are still available for Edmund’s Christmas dance the Friday after next. Last Edmund dance you won’t be a guest at.

BELLA (grinning at WILL): You’re on.

WILL: For sure. But you and Ham haven’t said much about the main act – Steve, Fred, Alice, Jan?

HAMILTON: And we’re not going to. You’ll have two terms to get to know them yourselves.

ANNE (coyly): Learn anything?

HAMILTON: If we did, you’ll find out.

JAKE: I did. I learned that my control freak can really relax.

HAMILTON: Not for long as long as I’d have liked. Fred and Steve had to catch their train south. But they send their regards.

WILL: What’d ya talk about?

HAMILTON: Everything. School, friends, family, love. Especially dealing with separation.

ANNE: Anything particularly interesting?

HAMILTON: Yeh. They wonder whether we still need some of our rules.

MARK: Which ones?

HAMILTON: Our thinking about our girls to the point of ignoring each other – going one at a time, not looking into each other’s eyes or kissing or talking.

WILL: But Jan, Alice, Josh and I thought about Fred, Steve, Caroline and Bella – although, since it was, well, straight, we didn’t go one at a time, or not kiss. We just kept our eyes shut and didn’t talk.

JAKE: Right. They think doing that’s a good idea when a guy is standing in for another guy, or a girl is standing in for another girl, or both.

MARK: But they think it’s not necessary for two guys standing in for their girls? Or for two girls standing in for their guys?

HAMILTON: That’s the gist. Steve and Fred say they’ve never tried to ignore each other.

MARK: How do they do that and not fall in love?

HAMILTON: They’ve been together with their girls so much that they’re in love with each other anyhow – but as their girls’ lovers. They trigger memories of their girls in each other, without even trying.

MARK: Ham, you and I aren’t there yet. This is only our third weekend with Jackie and Anne.

JAKE: They think that’s weird, too. They wonder whether we might be feeling guilty, whether our using so many rules and getting together as two couples so seldom might be ways of punishing ourselves for all the lying we’ve being doing.

HAMILTON: Mark, our letting everyone think we’re gay has made us want to assure ourselves that we’re not.

JAKE: And the way I got you and Hamilton together, having each of you pretend to the other that I was a guy, has just made that worse.

HAMILTON: And you and I haven’t just been letting people think we’re gay, Mark. We’ve been letting people think we’re scum – that I was two-timing Jacqueline with you, and that you were cool with that.

JAKE: And Anne and I have been letting you do that. We’ve been hurting people we love, and who love us. How could that not make us all feel crappy? The lie that I started by biking up to this school in drag the first day of summer term has just grown and grown. Until now.

MARK: So Fred and Steve think we may not need those rules any more now that we’ve stopped lying?

JAKE: So do Jan and Alice. They also think if we stopped trying so hard to ignore each other during the weeks, the four of us could spend more weekends together, some of them just sharing a bed without going wild. They think that now that we’re not lying to everyone, what we have could become less intense. Because we’ll all feel less guilty.

ANNE: Think they’re right?

JAKE: Only one way to find out. If it doesn’t work, we switch back, or part way back.

WILL: Maybe you should try it. What’s the worst that could happen?

MARK: That Ham and I totally pervert you and Scout, who ends up unable to get elected dog-catcher? That we all go ahead and get married anyhow and then abandon our wives and kids to shack up together in Scout’s beach house on St. Martin? That Scout leaves the Calhoun fortune to a hot fourteen-year-old boy who looks a lot like Ham, and this school ends up as the lakeside annex of Edmund High?

BELLA (reaching back to pull WILL’s mouth to hers): Not gonna happen.

ANNE (turning around to face MARK, wrapping her legs around his hips): For sure.

JAKE (wrapping her arms around MARK and ANNE while nibbling HAMILTON’s ear): Hammy and I agree. You and I might fall in love, though, Anne.

ANNE: Yeh, but discreetly. Not like our guys.

MARK (nuzzling ANNE): So, Ham, have you already picked out my ring?

HAMILTON: I’ll ask Mom to buy some Cracker Jacks.

MARK (pressing ANNE into HAMILTON, kissing her neck): I will fall in love with you.

HAMILTON (gazing into JAKE’s eyes): I know. Me too, with you.

MARK: We’ll hold hands in public.

HAMILTON: No one will care. Least of all our girlfriends.

MARK: Finn will find sketches of your chest on the back of my homework assignments.

HAMILTON (kissing JAKE’s head): He’ll survive the shock.

MARK: Our grandchildren will find our love letters in a trunk in the attic.

HAMILTON: No, Krudski’s grandchildren will. And they’ll change all the names so that our grandchildren won’t be entitled to any of the royalties when they publish them.

MARK: I’ll start whispering love poems like Krudski’s to you in bed.

HAMILTON: Great. That’ll turn me straight again.

BELLA (breaking off from kissing WILL): Ya know, some of Will’s poems are kinda nice.

HAMILTON: The ones he writes to you may be. The stuff he wrote to Caroline made me dysfunctional for days. That’s why Jacqueline and I had to get you and Will together.

BELLA: Funny.

(A knock on the door.)

MARK: Come in, Jen.

(The group in the pool does not disengage at all. JENNIFER and BRANDON enter, JENNIFER in a spa robe, BRANDON in gym shorts and carrying another tray with six mugs, a milk pitcher and a sugar bowl, all bearing the book-and-crowns. Both look freshly showered.)

JENNIFER: Hi guys.

BELLA: Hi, Jen. Hi Brandon.

BRANDON: Hi everybody. Bella, Will, best wishes.

WILL: Thanks, Brandon. Same to you and Jen.

MARK (moving back to the ledge, with ANNE): Thanks for the coffee.

BRANDON: Our pleasure.

(JENNIFER takes the tray from BRANDON, sets it down on the window side of the pool, near MARK.)

BELLA: Brandon, is your cotillion invitation to dance with you still open?

BRANDON: Very open, if we can both bring partners.

BELLA: We can. I think I said, “Maybe later.” Will and I hope later will be soon.

HAMILTON: It can be now. Brandon, would you and Jenny like to join us?

BRANDON: Thanks, Ham. We’ve intruded enough this morning. But another time, we’d love to. Bella, Will, could Jen and I take you to dinner sometime this week?

WILL: Sure. Pick a day, Jen. Bella and I have pretty flexible work schedules, thanks to Grace and Scout.

JEN: Tuesday?

BRANDON: At Friendly’s? If Scout and Grace are working, we can spend a little time with them.

BELLA (after shooting a congratulatory glance at JENNIFER): Thank you. That would be lovely.

BRANDON: Great. … (To JENNIFER:) Help you clear the empties?

(JENNIFER nods. She and BRANDON set to work picking up the empty mugs and putting on the other tray, on the side of the pool away from the window.)

WILL: Brandon, thanks for offering to let Mark and me switch rooms when I need to.

BRANDON: My pleasure, guy. Just let me keep Mark occasionally, please. I’ve only begun really to know him.

MARK: You will, Brandon. That I promise you.

(BRANDON smiles, picks up the tray on the side of the pool away from the window, now bearing six empty mugs. He and JENNIFER walk toward the door.)

JENNIFER: Jacqueline, if we don’t see you again before you leave, have a good trip back to Grottlesex.

JAKE: Thanks, Jen. And thanks again for this morning, both of you.

BRANDON: Jacqueline, we’re glad we could do that. And the, uh, cox-stroke coordination was … inspiring. … (Stopping near the door:) Have Anne and Mark told you and Hamilton what they did for Jen and me Thanksgiving night, with Will’s help?

JAKE: You mean getting Ham’s dad to send you to the Langtrees’ for dinner? Yeh.

BRANDON: Way more than that, Jacqueline. They totally floored us – me especially. A class act.

HAMILTON (looking at ANNE and MARK): No, they haven’t told us.

BELLA (looking at WILL): News to me, too.

BRANDON: Then get them to tell you. And thank them for us, please.

JENNIFER: Mark, when you’re done with the pool, Brandon and I’ll be in the dining room. Do finish well before nine, please. (She opens the door.)

HAMILTON: Jen, Brandon – wait, please. Jacqueline and I’d like to hear about your Thanksgiving night from you. And maybe help you thank Anne and Mark a little yourselves.

BELLA: So would Will and I.

ANNE: Brandon, why don’t you and Jen order breakfast in my room, then come back down here? We could all talk and get a little better acquainted in the sauna, while Jen’s bromine shocks the pool.

MARK: Then we’ll help Jen clean up, OK?

(BRANDON looks questioningly at JENNIFER.)

JENNIFER (kissing BRANDON on the cheek): Say yes, boy. 

BRANDON (to the group in the pool): Thanks.

JENNIFER: We’ll see you after breakfast.

(BRANDON and JENNIFER leave.)

WILL (to HAMILTON): Wow.

HAMILTON: Yeh. Whatever you all did, it was good work. … (To MARK:) Really good work.

MARK: We had a good story … (Taking JAKE’s hand, kissing it:) … and good teachers.

ANNE: And some help this morning.

MARK (beginning once again to fix and pass out the coffee – not needing to ask, this time, how anyone likes it): So, Bella, what shall we do till Jenny and Brandon come back? Try to take over the world?

BELLA: No, we’re gonna do something a lot less raunchy.

JAKE: Unlike what you four were doin’ when Hamilton and I came back in here, which was … ?

BELLA: Educational.

WILL (settling onto the ledge near MARK and ANNE, pulling BELLA onto his lap): The kind of curiosity that’s expected of two scholarship students.

HAMILTON: Right. … (To BELLA:) So what’s the lesson plan?

BELLA: I’d like us all to share something. Something Will gave me ten years ago, and gave me again last night.

(BELLA turns around, takes the sugar bowl off its saucer on the serving tray, reaches into the robe lying by the side of the pool, pulls a small plastic bag of cinnamon red-hots out of the pocket, pours a dozen or so of the candies out onto the saucer.)

JAKE (awed, looking at WILL): Red-hots.

BELLA (smiling at HAMILTON): Will gave them to me just before we made love for the first time.

(HAMILTON and JAKE look first at each other, then at WILL and BELLA. So do MARK and ANNE.)

JAKE (kissing WILL tenderly): Will, you’re perfect.

ANNE (caressing WILL’s head): Better than that.

(WILL, yet again, blushes.  BELLA seals the bag, returns it to the pocket of the robe, and settles back onto WILL’s lap.)

BELLA: Afterwards, I asked Will where he got them. He told me he didn’t get them. He said that Hamilton spoke, and they appeared. That’s all he’ll say. Wanna help me understand that, Ham?

HAMILTON (to BELLA, shrugging): Sounds like a miracle. Have you tried dreaming about it?

BELLA: Yeh, but I’m blocked.

HAMILTON: Then my lips are sealed.

JAKE: It was a miracle ten years ago. Why should this time be different?

BELLA: You know about this?

JAKE: No, just supporting my guy. And stating the obvious.

BELLA: I’d like to give a red-hot to each of you. But if they’re a miracle, I’ve gotta ask for something in return. Can’t take miracles for granted, can we, Hamilton?

HAMILTON: What do you have in mind?

BELLA: Learning more about you and Jacqueline. Since you seem to be the miracle-worker.

HAMILTON: Anything in particular?

BELLA: Yes and no. “Fudge and Fairy Tales” at your girls' school Tuesday evening sounded kinda fun. I’d like to do something like that.

MARK: How like that, Bella?

BELLA: Each of us tells something about Hamilton and Jacqueline that at least some of us haven’t heard before. Or helps us see something we’ve missed in a story about them that we have heard before. Each of us but Jackie and Ham can choose any story he or she likes.

JAKE: What do you want from Hamilton and me?

BELLA: Answers to questions. One for each of you. A small price for a miracle.

JAKE (to HAMILTON): I’m kinda past embarrassment. You?

HAMILTON (shrugging): I’m an open book. No secrets, not hard to read.

BELLA: Yeh, right. … Will and I’ll start. Jackie and Ham’ll go last. Ya ready, Will?

WILL: Sure.

BELLA: So earn your red-hot. Tell us something about Hamilton and Jacqueline some of us don’t already know.

WILL: OK. … (He pulls HAMILTON and JAKE onto the ledge, JAKE on HAMILTON’s lap, between the other two couples.) … Jacqueline, mind if I ask you a question first?

JAKE: Ask.

WILL: Do you remember who was assigned to room with you last summer, before you hacked into the school database to get yourself a single?

JAKE: No. I didn’t care who he was – he had to go.

WILL: Then I’d like to share my best guess about that. I’ve been thinking about that since Tuesday, when Ham told me how the first-year room assignments were made.

JAKE: So have I, since last night, when you told Bella and me about that.

ANNE: Will wanted help thanking Ham for Scout?

WILL: Not just for Scout.

JAKE: It was a great night. … But as soon as Will told us that the first-year room assignments weren’t just random, I saw I’d been incredibly lucky that my messing with them had worked.

WILL: No kidding. Who’d the guy you ditched end up with, and how did that not disturb the “Feng Shui”?

JAKE: Beats me. I didn’t, like, reassign the guy. I just deleted him.

WILL: Yeh, mystifying. So I asked Ham’s mom about that Thursday evening over whist with Finn and the Dean. Partly because two weeks ago, when I’d first told her and the Dean about you and Ham, she’d looked puzzled when I got to the part about your getting a single room by hacking the database.

JAKE: What’d she say?

WILL: That she’d never noticed any change that you made to the rooming assignments. She said she’d let Hamilton handle your room assignment, because you were the only guy who’d expressed an interest in coxing crew in his application, and Ham expected to row stroke. She’d assumed Ham had let you have the single because your cox-stroke relationship could make up for your lack of roommates.

JAKE (to HAMILTON): It kinda did. … But I deleted somebody. And you obviously reassigned him, if your mom didn’t. … But why didn’t you just put him back in with me? You couldn’t have thought your mom had deliberately deleted him without reassigning him. It had to look like a mistake … unless you suspected a hack.

HAMILTON: The room assignment process is confidential.

MARK: Except when you choose otherwise, like, so that Will and Scout would feel less weird about having fallen for each other.

WILL (to HAMILTON): Really. You’re so full of it. … Jacqueline, there’s a possibility you’re overlooking.

JAKE: What?

WILL: Maybe the guy you deleted was never reassigned because he already had a room off-campus. Because he was a faculty kid – a stroke who wanted to room on campus with his cox. Maybe he entered himself into the database as your roommate as a suggestion to his mom. And maybe he mistook his deletion by you, before his mom ever noticed he’d done that, for his mom’s answer to his suggestion.

JAKE (to HAMILTON): You didn’t. … You wanted to room with me? Even before we met?

(HAMILTON's eyes roll upward.)

WILL: Ham’s parents, Finn and I suspect that he did. … (Coyly:) "It’s about destiny. Life is predetermined. Nothing you can do can alter your fate." … My red-hot, Bella?

BELLA: Maybe. … Anne?

ANNE: I can relate to why a stroke would want to room with his cox. The better you know each other, the better you can read each other.

BELLA: And he could have done it without keeping some guy from attending Rawley – ‘cause all your first-years get doubles, so if Jacqueline was able to get a single, an odd number of first-year guys must have accepted admission. … Jackie?

JAKE: The indirection, the subtlety – it’s him. Not asking his parents to their faces, so that if they said "no," they could all pretend it never happened.

BELLA: Mark?

MARK: Nothing else fits the facts. And “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable …”

HAMILTON: Traitor!

JAKE (to HAMILTON): But I thought you were drawn to me by my bike, not my application for admission.

HAMILTON: I was. I didn't read your application. After my mom told me you were the only guy who'd said he'd wanted to cox, I thought it'd be better to get to know you in person.

JAKE: That's why you were pretty obviously waiting for me in the dining hall vestibule before our first-night dinner?

HAMILTON: The guy I was waiting for wasn't Jake Pratt, my prospective cox. It was the guy I'd seen on your bike that afternoon. I didn't know they were they same, 'cause my mom said you'd chosen not to send in a photo.

JAKE: Somehow cutting my hair and buying a blazer and tie months before I'd even know whether I'd been accepted didn't seem worthwhile.

HAMILTON: So when we shook hands, and you said your name, I was pleased that the guy I’d been drawn to for having the guts to bring a motorbike to school turned out to be my cox.

JAKE: And your half-stifled smug grin so freaked me out. You'd introduced yourself as the Dean's son, you'd obviously singled me out, and that grin said you knew something you shouldn't. I kept trying to read your face all through dinner, 'cause I didn't know what it was - till the next day, just before our first rowing practice, when I learned that all you knew was that I had a bike.

HAMILTON: And what I talked to you about then, the first time we were alone together, was what most interested me – keeping you safe from your brazenness, not our rowing.

JAKE: So were you the guy I deleted as my roommate?

HAMILTON (locking foreheads with JAKE): Does it matter?

JAKE: No. … Thanks, Will. … Bella, give your guy a red-hot, please.

(BELLA gives WILL a candy. WILL takes it, pulls Bella to him, puts it into her mouth, gently kisses her.)

WILL (breaking off): Your turn, Bella.

BELLA: In the cabin on the road to Carson, the morning after I wrecked my truck trying not to hit a deer … Jackie showed me that one kind deed can be enough to tell someone how well he’s loved you.

WILL (smiling): I remember. But Anne and Mark weren’t there.

BELLA (to ANNE): I told everyone that I was gonna walk the rest of the way to Carson, ‘cause I needed to talk with my mom. I didn’t ask anyone to come with me. But first Sean, then Scout, and then Jackie said they’d come. And when Jackie said that, Ham looked at her, totally amazed.

JAKE: ‘Cause it was the first selfless thing I’d done since he’d known me. I'd been totally wrapped up in my own problems.

BELLA (to HAMILTON): And you looked so grateful, Ham. Not happy - way past happy. ‘Cause you knew she’d be OK, even though she had to leave Rawley, leave you. You knew you’d saved her.

(BELLA puts a red-hot into WILL’s mouth and kisses him intensely.)

BELLA (breaking off): Mark?

MARK: On the lake, the week before summer session ended. Finn held a lit seminar on the floating dock in the lake. He had Ham read out loud the epigraph to John O’Hara’s _Appointment in Samarra_. Then Finn asked us what it was about and we talked about destiny and free will, about what you can change and what you can’t change. … (To WILL): You remember, obviously – you just repeated what you said then.

WILL: Like I said Tuesday, it helps to write things down.

MARK: But you may have missed something. … Jackie – Ham said that one of the things you can’t change is your personality. It was subtle, calculated irony, just like what he said to you on the rooftop that made you kiss him. ‘Cause for weeks, everything he’d done, including letting everyone think he was gay so he could be with you, was to help you change your personality, to heal emotionally.

JAKE (looking into HAMILTON’s eyes): I know.

MARK: Of course, Ham was hoping that you’d contradict him. And you did, immediately.

HAMILTON (to JAKE): You said “Questionable.”

MARK: You gave Ham just what he needed, Jacqueline. You were telling him that you were trying to change your personality. That you wanted him to know that. That you wanted him to know how well he was helping you try to do it. So well that you thought you’d be able to do it.

WILL: Right. And when Jake said “Questionable,” Ham smiled. Now I get why.

MARK: Yeh. It was just a little smile. But enough to tell you, Jackie – and me, although Ham didn’t know that – how much what you’d just said meant to him. The whole conversation was just three words, “Your personality” and “Questionable.” But there was a whole love story in it, the story of a love that spoke like silence.

WILL: You’re right, Mark, I totally missed that. … (Shaking his head:)

         “O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:  
          To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.”

I bet there’s a lot more I’ve missed, too. Think you might look over what I’ve written?

MARK: Jackie?

JAKE: Go ahead. For some reason, I trust Will more today than I did yesterday. Can’t imagine why …

WILL: Thanks, Jacqueline. You won’t regret it, I promise. (He kisses JAKE.)

MARK: Worth a red-hot, Bella?

(BELLA nods, gives MARK a light kiss and hands him a red-hot. MARK puts it into ANNE’s mouth and kisses her tenderly.)

MARK (breaking off): Your turn, girl.

ANNE: Jackie, do you remember how you and I first met?

JAKE: As if I’ll ever forget. … We both showed up for girls’ JD crew try-outs. You wanted to row stroke, I wanted to cox. We both made it.

ANNE: And do you remember when Hamilton and I first met?

JAKE: Of course. The weekend after that. I wanted him to meet my new stroke, ‘cause I really liked you – and he was my old stroke. You two hit it off really well.

ANNE: Jackie, that’s partly because that wasn’t the first time I’d met Hamilton.

JAKE: What?

ANNE: Ham had had a bellyful of Sally the first night he had to sleep on Gordon’s and Paul’s floor. His very first night at Grottlesex, during first-year orientation week. Before crew try-outs.

JAKE: Yeh, so?

ANNE: So the next afternoon, while you were off doing orientation stuff, he took the copy of _Sense and Sensibility_ that Bella’d given you in Manhattan out to the lawn of the quad, took off his shirt, and waited for first-year girls to come by. I, uh, happened to notice him.

BELLA: Did you have to wait in line?

ANNE: I jumped the queue. Two girls were already sitting with him. Both weak competition. Neither was picking up on his irony – or Austen’s. Making them feel totally out of Ham’s league was pretty easy. But as soon as they were gone, Ham took control of the conversation. He started talking to me about the things Jackie likes, and the problems she’s had – as if they were his own likes and problems.

JAKE (to HAMILTON, pulling away from him): You pretended to be me?

HAMILTON: I like you, Jake.

ANNE: And I liked him, and let him know that.

JAKE: Did he ever mention that he had a girlfriend?

ANNE: I asked, Jackie. He said he’d had one last time he saw her. So I asked what about next time. He said he didn’t know, that a guy has to kinda start over and win a girl every time he sees her, that he’d try to do that, but that you never know how it’ll turn out. He wouldn’t say any more about her, like he loved her too much to talk about her.

WILL: Smooth, Ham, real smooth.

ANNE: Of course, I knew then that my chances were poor, but I really liked him, he was fun to flirt with, and I thought, what the heck, there might be more like him where he comes from. And as soon as he saw I wasn’t gonna split just because I didn’t have a chance, he suddenly seemed real interested.

BELLA (amused): As soon as you showed that you might like him even if he were a girl.

ANNE: Yeh. … He started finding out all about me. And when he found out I hadn’t decided what sport I wanted to do, he talked about how great crew is, particularly about how great rowing stroke is, and offered to teach me how. So we made an appointment for the next day.

JAKE: Whoa! You told me about him, at our first rowing practice. The guy who made you want to row stroke. But you told me he had a different name, and came from a different school.

ANNE: He did. That’s why, when you introduced me to Ham, I didn’t say, “Oh, we’ve met.” He’d told me he was Ted North, from Lawrenceville. He’d said he was a second-year, and knowing so much about prep schools, he’d fooled me. And “Ted” spent a couple hours each day for the rest of orientation week teaching me to row sweep, while you were off doing heaven knows what.

JAKE (narrowing her eyes at HAMILTON): Checking out nearly every department and activity in the school, at Ham’s insistence. Every day he gave me a full itinerary for the next day.

ANNE: You do know the school pretty well as a result. And he taught so well. Shirtless, in a coxless pair, or on an erg, arms around me correcting my stroke, or facing me and playing cox to me, looking into my eyes. Never quite making a pass, but …

JAKE (to HAMILTON): Wanker!

WILL: He’s not like that here, Jacqueline. Really.

JAKE: Of course he’s not. He played my closest friend - to make her my closest friend. … (To ANNE:) So that's why, from day one, you stroked so much like he had … looked into my eyes the same way he did … read me and responded like he did.  He taught you to do that.

ANNE (nodding): So when you introduced me to your perfect lover, whom I was dying to meet, 'cause you and I were already kinda falling for each other, and talking about rooming together … I knew right away what he’d done. He’d found his girlfriend way more than a rowing stroke.  He'd found you someone to be with you when he couldn't.  He sandbagged us, Jackie.

JAKE: Fleming …

HAMILTON: It’s what we do, Jake.

WILL: Congrats, Anne. You were sandbagged by a guy pretending to be a fictional character pretending to be a girl who was at Grottlesex because she’d pretended to be a boy.

ANNE: Excuse me?

WILL: “Ted North, from Lawrenceville” is the protagonist of _Theophilus North_ , by Thorton Wilder. I didn’t know Ham had read it.

JAKE: Neither did I, until yesterday, when Dr. Hotchkiss, who of course had figured everything out months ago, gave me a first edition.

WILL (looking at HAMILTON): Really?

JAKE: Yeh. With an inscription: “To Penelope, for waiting. – Of all the forms of genius, goodness has the longest awkward age.” Turns out it’s been Hamilton’s favorite novel since his fifteenth birthday, when his godfather gave him a copy.

HAMILTON: If I told you everything about me right away, there’d be no surprises left for the future.

JAKE: Stuff the surprises, Fleming. … And Crompton, you didn’t tell me about this because …?

ANNE: I liked you, and Ham, and didn’t want to make you angry at him. And I didn’t want to lose you, and you’re so damned proud, and if you knew he’d set us up, you might have ditched me. He didn’t ask me not to tell you.

MARK: He knew he didn’t have to.

JAKE: You knew too?

MARK: Since the first weekend after Columbus Day – parents’ day weekend, when Anne told her folks. Anne let it all play out without telling anyone. She was the only one who knew it all … what you were doing and what Ham was doing. She trusted you both, Jackie. And she was right to do that.

JAKE (to HAMILTON): And when were you gonna tell me?

HAMILTON: I wasn’t. More Anne’s place to do that, don’tcha think?

JAKE (to ANNE): And why are you telling me this now?

ANNE: I dunno. ‘Cause it doesn’t matter anymore? ‘Cause it’s kinda funny and we’re all here together to enjoy it? ‘Cause I’ve got three big strong guys to protect me if you go ape? Cause I’ve decided to come to Rawley with you? ‘Cause I want my red-hot and this is the best story I’ve got?

BELLA: And none of that matters. There’s really only one question you should be asking, Jackie.

JAKE: Yeh, what?

BELLA: Did Hamilton find you a good stroke, and a good roommate? Did he love you well, girl?

JAKE: Too freakin’ well, that’s the problem. God, Hamilton, we’d made love before orientation week. I thought you were gonna be honest with me, that you thought I was well enough to handle it.

HAMILTON: Jake, I haven’t lied to you. And haven’t you ever done anything nice for me that you haven’t told me about? You know, I have this friend who coxes my shell now, 'cause the very next day after you and I first made love, some girl phoned him from Manhattan and …

JAKE : Alright! So it’s what we do. And you always have to do it better, don’t you? Give my boyfriend-selected roommate her red-hot, please, Bella.

WILL: Jake – Ham used to do it better than you. Not anymore. I was with you yesterday at the diner, with Ryder. I was with you last night at the guest cottage, talking about Scout. You love as well as Hamilton does now – better sometimes. And that’s what he’s wanted since the beginning.

MARK: Jackie, you gave me Anne. And next year Ham’s going to have a girlfriend-selected roommate. Just like he has a girlfriend-selected cox now.

BELLA: Jacqueline – you and Ham are both good at it. And you’re both getting better. I hope you both always will. But the person you should be comparing yourself to isn’t Hamilton. It’s the person you can be, and will be someday if you and Ham both help each other. You know that.

(JAKE goes to the poolside near the tray, takes a red-hot, gives it to ANNE.)

JAKE (to ANNE): I’m too proud, and Hamilton’s a damned prima donna, but he found me a great friend.

(JAKE kneels on the ledge over HAMILTON’s lap, looking down at him.)

JAKE: Hamilton, what would you say if I asked you to love me less well sometimes?

HAMILTON: I’d say you were loving me less well than you could.

(JAKE kisses HAMILTON gently, tentatively. ANNE quietly puts her red-hot into MARK’s mouth. MARK kisses her with anxious relief. He and ANNE lose themselves in each other and drop out of the conversation for a while.)

BELLA (after a pause): So Jacqueline, are you ready for your question?

JAKE (still kneeling over HAMILTON’s lap, caressing his head now): Sure.

BELLA: I’d like to ask about the first time Ham told you he loved you, last summer at the marina, and about your restaurant date just before that.

JAKE: What about it?

BELLA: When you told Will and me about that, on our walk to Carson, it sounded like Hamilton, at the restaurant, turned into an insensitive caricature of a male chauvinist pig, which is really out of character for him. Then, at the marina, he suddenly turned back into a kind, caring, sensitive guy who told you that he loves you. That seems hard to understand.

JAKE: It’s simple. When I change clothes, he changes personality. I put on a sexy dress, he turns into a jerk. I change back into denims, he turns back into himself.

BELLA: Funny. Like yesterday at dinner, when you wore the sexiest dress you could find at Filene’s, and Ham was so perfect that every girl in the hall was envious? Or the first time he ever saw you in a sexy dress, when your mom came here last July, and he so charmingly kept her from figuring out you weren’t enrolled at the girls’ school? No red-hot for that answer, girl. Wanna try again?

JAKE: Hamilton?

HAMILTON: Like I said, I’m an open book. But if you wanna read it for them, go ahead.

JAKE: OK. … Hamilton never talked to me, last summer, about my emotional problems, or about the things they were making me do, like switching schools and hacking and cross-dressing. Except once – at the restaurant, just before he told me he loved me. You can’t understand what he was doing that day unless you understand what he was doing the rest of summer term, after the cotillion.

WILL: I think Bella and I understand that pretty well. Ham was just loving you, ‘cause your basic problem was that you felt unlovable.

JAKE: Right. The solution was simple, although the problem wasn’t. My mom had given up on love being anything more than sex, and I’d bought into that, even though I’d rejected her for it. That’s why she was so distant from me, why I felt she didn’t love me – I’d already rejected her for making me feel I couldn’t really be loved.

HAMILTON (pulling JAKE closer and wrapping his arms around her): So the more you rejected her, the more she neglected you, and the more you felt your personality was unlovable.

JAKE: Yeh. It was a lot more complex than I understood last summer. I needed way more than for my mom to pay attention to me. I needed proof that I could be loved for my personality, not my body. Ham’s helped me unravel all that, in New York and at Grottlesex.

MARK (still making out with ANNE): Mmmm … But last summer, he just cut through the Gordian knot.

ANNE: Down, Hephaestion.

MARK (nipping ANNE’s neck): You do know you’re gonna have to pay for that, girl?

ANNE: My purse is bottomless, boy.

MARK (moving a hand below the water): Yeh, it is. (He continues to make out with ANNE.)

JAKE (amused): But Hamilton had to talk about my emotional problems once last summer. Before he told me he loved me, he had to tell me that he saw how messed up I was, so that I’d know he loved me, warts and all.

BELLA: So at the restaurant Ham told you that you were a cross-dressing she-man who didn’t know who she was. Then at the marina, right after that, he told you for the first time that he loved you. It would have been useless to tell you he loved you before he’d let you know that he saw all of you.

JAKE: Right. So if you already understand it, why are you asking about it?

BELLA: Because that understanding of it implies that everything he did at the restaurant, and the marina, was all a calculated act. It implies that none of his male-macho horsecrap was real. That it was all done just to piss you off, to provoke you into giving him an excuse to tell you, without seeming to be really unkind, that he knew how screwed up you were.

JAKE: Yeh, so?

WILL: That’s kinda hard to believe.

JAKE: Why? Almost everything Hamilton said to me all the second half of summer term, after the cotillion, was a calculated act. He pretended to be hot for my body while ignoring my emotional problems – the same guy for whom my personality is so much more important than my body that he went for me when he thought I was a boy, even though he was straight, and scared to death of being gay.

WILL: Yeh, that’s hard to believe, too.

JAKE: Exactly. And he whined about how terribly he was suffering because everyone thought he was gay – the same guy who had been willing really to become gay for me. It was all an act. His words masked his mind like I’d been masking my body. … What he was saying at the restaurant wasn’t much different, except that his act there was more outrageous.

BELLA: But you didn’t understand that at the time, did you? If you had, you wouldn’t have gotten angry, and it wouldn’t have worked, right?

JAKE: Right. I didn’t understand that until that night, when I thought about how he’d acted at the restaurant in context of how he’d acted at the marina – until I saw both as part of the same act.

BELLA: But you did see through Ham’s bigger act. You knew he wasn’t really as worried about being thought gay as he pretended to be, and that he wasn’t really focused on your body while ignoring your personality. Otherwise you would have dumped the creep, right?

JAKE: Yeh, the one time I thought it wasn’t just an act – when Hamilton told me I “wasn’t worth it” – I told him I was leaving Rawley. Apart from that, I saw through it, and I let him know that in ways that didn’t make us talk about it. Like, when he’d whine that my cross-dressing was threatening his sexual identity, and then ask to make out with me, I’d get on top and keep him on the bottom.

HAMILTON: My fragile male ego has never recovered.

JAKE: You loved it. … (To BELLA:) Hamilton understood that I was telling him not just that I saw through his act, but that I appreciated it. That I appreciated the compassion that his dorky passionate façade masked and – in a weird, ironic way – expressed. That I was telling him he was loving me well.

WILL: But didn’t you want some emotional honesty?

JAKE: Honesty’s what I got at the restaurant, Will. When you’re as screwed up as I was, that’s the last thing you want. I didn’t want to talk about my problems. And I didn’t want to feel pitied. Hamilton saw all that, right from the start. I never had to tell him. His whole act was gentle, subtle, playful, ironic – emotional foreplay, weeks of it. And I needed that, because I wasn’t ready for more.

WILL: So his acting wasn’t better at the restaurant than it usually was?

JAKE: Oh, no. The male chauvinist pig act at the restaurant was Hammy’s _pièce de résistance_. He even started it out by alluding to Jimi Hendrix' _Foxy Lady_ \- kinda the musical epitome of male chauvinist pigdom.

WILL: You didn't mention that on our trip to Carson.

JAKE: I didn't catch the allusion until he played the song on his guitar for me in New York.

BELLA: He likes to be appreciated.

JAKE: No joke. … And after he'd called me a "cross-dressing she-man," when I tried to smooth things over by saying we didn't know how to act - meaning, behave as a guy and a girl in public - he said, "Sure we do!" And then he took his male-macho act up a level, ordering for both of us without asking me - and not even ordering the same thing for both of us, as if he didn't know the form at all.

WILL: Ewww … an implied pun on the two senses of "act." And you didn't get it?

JAKE: Not then. His act at the restaurant was so convincing that he had me totally humbled, asking him, when we got back to the marina, whether he thought I was a freak, assuring him I really was myself with him - even though I'd been acting all summer long.

WILL: So by then you _had_ gotten it.

JAKE: No - at least not consciously. I was just using the word in its other sense. And that's when he told me he loved me - but buried it in a pile of horse-crap about how confused he was, saying he didn't know how to act either.

WILL (looking at HAMILTON): Going back to the "behave" meaning of act - ostensibly, but not really.

JAKE: Right. Ostensibly, he was saying he didn’t know how to behave when he’s with me, ‘cause my cross-dressing confused his poor weak mind. But that was totally ironic. What he really meant was that he’d just pulled off the best acting job of his life, that he’d totally manipulated me at the restaurant.

WILL: And you _still_ didn't get it?

BELLA: Maybe she was a little distracted - by Ham's telling her he loved her.

JAKE: And by his making me dig it out of his horse-crap by interrupting him and asking him to repeat it. And when I asked him to do that, when he knew I’d caught it, knew that his act was complete, he couldn’t hide how proud he was of it. He damned near took a bow. He broke into this smug, self-satisfied ear-to-ear grin.

ANNE (briefly breaking off from MARK): Mmmm … I’d love to have seen that.

JAKE: And of course he didn’t repeat the good part. Instead, he reached down into his pile of horse crap and pulled out a handful and said, “You mean this? Is this what you want?” I said no, and he reached down and did it again. Only the third time did he say, “Oh … the part about I love you?” It was _soooo_ blatant. He was so obviously teasing me. And he had so obviously planned it.

BELLA: And that’s what got you thinking, later that night, about what he’d done at the restaurant?

JAKE: Of course. And he intended me to see through it soon, to see how well he’d planned and performed his act – ‘cause that really did show that he loved me. He just didn’t want me to see through it while he was still performing. He only needed me not to see through it till he’d told me he loved me.

BELLA: But Jacqueline, how could a fifteen-year-old guy with no training as an actor do that?

JAKE: Natural talent. He’s naturally duplicitous, deceitful, conniving, crafty, cunning, scheming. It’s what he does. He loves doing it.

WILL (looking at MARK): Yeh. I’ve heard that before.

MARK (briefing disengaging from ANNE): But he’s duplicitous, deceitful, conniving, crafty, cunning and scheming in a nice way. It’s how he loves.

JAKE: Yeh, it is.

BELLA (to HAMILTON): Prisoner in the dock, have anything to say for yourself?

HAMILTON: Hey, I do what I do. I don’t think much about how I do it. I just think about why I do it. I mean, look at her, those beautiful eyes, that taught, muscular torso, those firm ripe … Ow!

ANNE: More horse crap.

MARK: His supply’s inexhaustible.

BELLA: So what sentence shall we pass on our consummate actor?

WILL: That he never appear on Broadway, or on the West End stage? Shall we banish him forever to a teen TV romance to perform for teenage girls who’ll never understand his act?

HAMILTON: Oh no! Teenage girls? “Please, Brer Fox, don’t fling me in dat brier-patch…”

BELLA (to WILL): Nah, that'd be a waste. Think we can come up with something better?

WILL: Definitely.

BELLA: So do I. Give Jacqueline her red-hot?

(WILL complies. JAKE drops the red-hot on HAMILTON’s lolling tongue. HAMILTON gives her a playfully obscene kiss. She reciprocates enthusiastically.)

BELLA (not waiting for that kiss to end): Time for your question, Ham. And I’m gonna let Will ask it.

WILL (sweetly): “ _Iam tuto_ ,” Ham. “ _Suam iam tuto_.” In Latin class Tuesday you wouldn’t translate that the obvious way, as suggesting that Orpheus, in Elysium, looks at Eurydice as being “safely his now.”

HAMILTON (breaking off): Orpheus is supposed to be a great lover, not a jerk who takes his girl for granted.

WILL: But there was one time last summer when you seemed to take Jacqueline for granted.

JAKE: You’re talking about the next-to-last week of summer term? When Hamilton told everyone he was going to move into my dorm room without asking me first? Then punched Ryder on the dock, and told me in front of everyone there that I wasn’t worth the grief Ryder was giving him?

WILL: Yes.

BELLA: Tread lightly, boy. Ham’s antics almost made Jackie leave. She was literally packing her bags.

JAKE (settling onto HAMILTON’s lap, glumly): Yeh, the one time I totally lost faith.

HAMILTON (kissing JAKE’s temple): You didn't. You never left. … What about all that, Will?

WILL: Wednesday night, you said Ryder sees a lot, right after you said he asked you whether your performance on the dock was staged for his benefit. So I’d like to ask: How much of all that was an act, and how much a loss of control, how much a miscalculation? If it was an act, what was it for? If it was a loss of control or a miscalculation, it was by far your worst, so what caused it?

HAMILTON: What do you think?

WILL: I’m not sure. The whole thing – your apparent rejection by Jake, followed by your public breakup with her on the dock – gave you a really great cover for Jacqueline’s departure from Rawley. Almost everybody thought that’s why she left. And you’d planned for her to leave at the end of summer term. So a lot of it seems calculated. But it couldn’t all have been.

HAMILTON: Why not?

WILL: Because it seems to have been provoked by Ryder’s starting to out you after catching you and Jake making out in the library, sticking his nose in her neck, and making his wisecrack about “genetic mutations.” That suggested that he suspected that she’s a girl – and now we know he did, he said so at the diner yesterday. You couldn’t have planned that, but it seems to have been the start of it all.

HAMILTON: Ryder’s act in the library did panic me a little.

JAKE: You so didn’t act like it. I said “That was close.” You said, “That was funny.”

HAMILTON: Why worry you?

JAKE: Right. Why not tell me I’m “not worth it” instead? That’ll worry me less.

BELLA: And Ham, some of the stuff you did was private.  Like pissing Jacqueline off about moving into her room, and asking your mom for permission to move into the dorms. Those things don’t seem like part of a drama staged to fool everybody, or to fool Ryder. Were they part of your panic?

HAMILTON: Not really. My panic was simply that I was scared that Ryder would out Jake as a girl by calling attention to my relationship with her. And Ryder’s just devilish enough to have done that deliberately, as he admitted yesterday. If he’d called serious attention to Jake and me as a gay couple … Jacqueline’s disguise might not have survived the scrutiny. I did not want her expelled.

WILL: So you killed two birds with one stone?

HAMILTON: Kind of. Until then, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to covering Jacqueline’s departure. I’d intended simply that she leave – and that I’d make sure she didn’t come back in the fall. But I saw that a public break-up with Jake was the best way to end the biggest risk posed by Ryder’s outing us.

BELLA: What risk was that?

HAMILTON: My parents. They’d have taken an interest in anyone I was known to have a relationship with. Especially an apparently gay relationship.

MARK: That’s part of why Ham and I have let them see ours. So they wouldn’t need to snoop – and maybe find Anne, and Jacqueline.

HAMILTON: They’d have scrutinized Jake, tried to get to know her, maybe even have contacted her mom. And if my Dad had found out last summer that Jake was a girl, he’d have been so pissed … He might have been really harsh with her, even if he’d caught her privately – to punish me.

WILL: So after Ryder started to out you, you staged a public breakup. But you didn’t think about covering Jacqueline's leaving the school?

HAMILTON: I did, half way through it. You remember when you and Scout saw me sitting in my window perch above the front door, thinking?

WILL: Yeh. You looked so bummed.

HAMILTON: I was bummed because I was deciding to do something that would hurt Jacqueline, but would cover her exit and help bring her back in the long run. I was deciding to make our public breakup … memorable.

WILL: Ah … Got it. … And earlier, you’d asked your mom if you could move into the dorms in order to fool your parents better? To make the break-up credible for them?

HAMILTON: Right. I had to use the same story for my parents that I was using for the students. If my parents had learned I’d told the school I was moving in with Jake before I’d even asked their permission to move out of the house …

WILL: They’d have smelled a rat.

HAMILTON (nodding): Like Jacqueline did.

BELLA (to JAKE): You figured out what Ham was doing?

JAKE: Only partly. And not right away. When I talked with you, that afternoon, I still couldn't understand it. But that evening, at dinner, and after dinner - I got a little help.

BELLA: From?

JAKE: Mark. He told me that Hamilton had announced publicly that he was moving in with me - before he'd told me, obviously. That was so outrageously indiscreet that his ludicrously bad form in suggesting it to me suddenly made sense. He'd obviously been trying to make people think we'd broken up, because Ryder had been starting to out us. He was protecting me.

BELLA: Without telling you he was doing it?

JAKE: Bella, he never told me anything. And he needed me to seem unhappy to make the break-up look credible.

WILL: So you construed Ham's behavior as kindly as you could.

JAKE: No, it was the only plausible construction. Hamilton had already shown me that he's insanely competent - a guy who taps into rooftop cables, rescues confiscated motorbikes, checks toilet stalls, fools visiting mothers ...

BELLA: To say nothing of his act at the restaurant and the marina.

JAKE: Exactly. But then, just when I'd needed him to tell me how I could leave Rawley Boys' fall term without losing him, he'd walked into my room and announced he'd be moving in. He hadn't asked, he hadn't said why - he'd just started talking about how good his posters were gonna look on my walls.

HAMILTON: Better than your _Vanishing Point_ poster.

JAKE: Granted. ... (To WILL:) But all that was totally unlike Hamilton - wildly out of character. What Mark told me made me see that it had to be an act - like the one he'd pulled on my mom, the one he'd pulled on me at the restaurant, and the one he'd been pulling ever since the cotillion, pretending to be terrified that people might think he's gay, and to be hot for my body but unconcerned with me character.

WILL: He'd been acting so much that you'd begun to expect it.

JAKE: Pretty much, yeh.

WILL: But Scout bought it. ... (To HAMILTON:) When you told us, from your window perch over the door, that you weren’t moving in with Jake, Scout immediately concluded that you and Jake had broken up.

HAMILTON: Yeh, and if everybody’d drawn that conclusion, it might have been enough to frustrate any crap Ryder might pull, and keep Jacqueline safe from my dad. But it wouldn’t have been unpleasant enough to explain her running off to another school for fall term.

WILL: So to do that, the next day, you punched Ryder on the dock, and told Jake in front of everyone who’d just seen you do that that “this is not worth it.”

HAMILTON (shrugging): That was the dramatic opportunity that presented itself. But it did feel good to punch Ryder. The guy’s verbal abuse is always better than mine.

WILL: Nastiness was never your strong suit, Ham.

JAKE: Actually, I thought his punching Ryder and telling me I wasn’t worth it was pretty nasty.

BELLA: No joke.

JAKE: So nasty that it never occurred to me that that, too, was an act.

WILL (to HAMILTON): So you broke up publicly and apologized privately …

JAKE: And sweetly.

WILL: You were playing with your friends’ feelings – Jacqueline’s, Scout’s, mine, everybody’s – first to protect Jacqueline from Ryder, then to cover her leaving Rawley.

HAMILTON: Sorry. I had to. Last summer I had to grow up … fast.

WILL: I know. … And you couldn't you tell Bella and me the whole truth, on our trip to Carson, because you hadn't yet told Jacqueline that she'd have to leave Rawley. But why didn't either you or Jacqueline tell us what she already knew - that your planning to move in with her was an act to make everyone think you two had broken up, so that no one would care about Ryder's outing you?

HAMILTON: I didn't tell you because I didn't know Jacqueline had seen that. And she didn't tell you he had because she wasn't ready to tell me. She didn't tell me until yesterday.

BELLA: You're kidding. ... (To JAKE:) Why?

JAKE: Because I'd seen through the moving-in act with help from Mark, and I didn't want Hamilton to know that.

BELLA: Until yesterday?

HAMILTON: Mark was still doing his best to help Jacqueline and me - in a way that he and Jacqueline weren't ready to tell me about till yesterday.

WILL: Until you'd won your game?

HAMILTON: Yes. Let Jacqueline and me tell you and Bella about that the next time we're with Anne and Mark - and have more time than we do this morning.

BELLA: Thanks, Ham. … (Looking at MARK:) We'll look forward to it.

WILL (looking at ANNE, nuzzling BELLA): We will. … (To HAMILTON:) So when did you finally tell Jacqueline that you’d staged a public breakup partly to cover her not coming back fall term?

HAMILTON: The third day of my stay with her in Manhattan, when I laid out my whole plan … how she’d have to leave Rawley for a year, how she might be able to come back as a girl next fall.

JAKE: Which is also when he told me he’d thought that all through the night of the cotillion. And when I learned that he’d come to me the next morning knowing not just how screwed up I was, and that he’d have to pretend to be gay for me, risk being booted for me, risk his relationship with his dad for me … but also that we’d have to be separated for a year …

BELLA: That’s when you knew for sure.

JAKE (nodding): The biggest secret my Swiss vault had been keeping was who he is.

WILL: So Ham, was there anything you did the second half of summer term that wasn’t an act?

HAMILTON: I wasn’t acting when I told Jacqueline I love her.

WILL: But you were acting when you pretended to be upset that Finn had caught her and that she might have to leave Rawley – ‘cause you knew she wasn’t coming back anyhow.

BELLA: He didn’t pretend all that well to be upset about that. He even whined about being hungry.

HAMILTON: I really was sad when Jacqueline left. I knew this year would be hard … (Looking at MARK:) And expected it to be way harder than it has been.

WILL: But your whining, pretending to be afraid that it was over …

JAKE: He acted out my fear – to let me know it wasn’t over. Made me console him – because it was the best way of consoling me.

HAMILTON: It wasn’t all acting. Life is uncertain.

JAKE (rubbing noses with HAMILTON): Which is why we brood and scheme and calculate and connive.

HAMILTON: Which is why we have courage.

(BELLA passes the saucer of red-hots to HAMILTON, who takes one and offers it to JAKE on the palm of his open hand.)

JAKE (eating the red-hot off HAMILTON’s palm, looking into his eyes): And friends.

HAMILTON: And friends. (He kisses JAKE, pulling her to him and pulling in WILL, BELLA, MARK and ANNE. 

After a moment, a knock on the door.)

JAKE (breaking off, smiling): And we have two new friends.

HAMILTON (returning her smile): We do. … (More loudly:) Jen, Brandon, come in. 

  
*       *       * 


	11. Scene 8 - A proper breakfast

INT - RAWLEY BOYS’, FINN’S SUITE. DAY 6 – SUNDAY (DAY - EARLY MORNING).

 

(The room is much as it was a day earlier, save that the hearth is cold, LENA’s knitting basket now lies on a corner of the long table by the wall adjoining the study, and the narrow adjoining room, the door to which is open, is now well-ordered. From a CD player on a bookshelf above RYDER's bed, David Gray's "[This Year's Love](http://davidgray.com/musicvideos/david-gray-this-years-love-official-video/)" plays softly. RYDER, his face still bruised, lies on his bed, again in jeans, barefoot, shirtless, reading a math text, next to him a pencil and a pad of paper covered with conics problems.

A soft knock on the corridor door of FINN’s living room. RYDER gets up, opens it. LENA’s there, in a black, half-length cashmere coat, knee-high boots, leather gloves.)

RYDER (pleased): Good morning, Lena.

LENA (surprised): ‘Morning, Forrest. … (Looking inside:) Where’s Finn?

RYDER: Out.

LENA: And how is it that you’re here?

RYDER: My new room adjoins.

LENA: I know that. And?

RYDER: Finn’s allowed me the run of his flat.

LENA (walking inside): Ah. … A single, with access to a faculty suite. How onerous! … Is the fireplace real on your side too?

RYDER (smiling faintly): Can’t block half a chimney.

LENA (returning RYDER’s smile): Mmmm … And your chores?

RYDER: Answer Finn’s door and phone when I’m here and he’s not. Take messages. Help blokes asking for help if I can. Ring up Finn in a pinch.

LENA (removing her gloves): Also onerous. Perhaps your work at the Dean’s office may prove equally burdensome.

RYDER: The thought’s crossed my mind.

LENA (pocketing her gloves): No rule enforcement duties?

RYDER: “Try to talk sense into them when they need it,” Finn said.

LENA (unfastening her coat belt): It is all rather lax, isn’t it? Why do you think that is, Forrest?

RYDER: Perhaps because the only rule this school gives a fig for can’t really be “enforced,” can it?

LENA (unbuttoning her coat to reveal a white blouse and plaid wool skirt): You should know.

RYDER: Yes.

LENA: Finn’s still with his guest?

RYDER: Seems likely.

LENA: Any idea when he’ll be back?

RYDER: Not a clue. … Take breakfast with me?

LENA: I thought you’d never ask.

RYDER: Then if you’ll excuse me, I’ll change into something less comfortable. (He backs toward his room.)

LENA: I’d rather you didn’t. I find your present tailoring impeccable.

RYDER: It’s winter … and the hall requires shirts.

LENA: Doesn’t the run of Finn’s suite include the use of his kitchen?

RYDER: For me. Not, I think, for my female guests.

LENA: I’m not your guest. I’m Finn’s. … (Nodding toward her knitting basket on the long table:) You did hear him tell me yesterday that I’m welcome to meet you here anytime?

RYDER: To discuss my coursework, presumably.

LENA: Ambiguity is what we make of it, and often deliberate, as Finn’s fond of pointing out. … (Glancing at RYDER’s bed:) You seem to have done some coursework since we last discussed it.

RYDER: A little. Math, mostly.

LENA: Good. So teach it to me over breakfast.

RYDER: I’d rather do that in hall.

LENA: Because it’s farther from your bed.

RYDER: Yes.

LENA: Forrest, close the door, please.

(RYDER starts toward his room.)

LENA: No, the other door.

(RYDER stops, turns.)

LENA (her eyes indicating the door to the corridor): This suite’s not subject to the often-honored-in-the-breach no-girls-in-boys’-rooms-with-door-closed rule, is it?

(RYDER warily reverses course, shuts the corridor door, stands by it.)

RYDER: You shouldn’t trust me.

LEN (turning her back to RYDER, extending her arms backward): I’ll risk letting you take my coat.

(RYDER walks to LENA, slowly, sensuously removes her coat, then hangs it on a peg near the door. LENA joins him at the door, leans back against it.)

LENA: And my boots, please?

(RYDER kneels down and again complies, in the same manner. LENA extends her hands to him, helping him stand.)

LENA: Thank you. … (Pulling him into the room:) And here I am. Ready for breakfast and still unharmed.

RYDER (locking foreheads): Sorry. I’m being a jerk.

LENA (smiling): That’s Yank-speak.

RYDER: It’s growing on me. … Last night was blinding.

LENA: Wendy and Susan were appreciative?

RYDER (spinning LENA around, holding her from behind, nipping her neck): I was talking about the first part of the night.

LENA: That was all for me, boy.

RYDER: From you to me, an oxymoron. But I didn’t want really to start with you till I’d finished with Wendy and Susan. Scout felt the same way. We’ll do better tonight.

LENA (looking back into his eyes): Forrest, you couldn’t do better than you did last night. And the best part was right after Scout left. When all you thought about was helping him and Grace.

RYDER: It wasn’t all I was thinking about, beautiful … just what needed doing. You saw Grace?

LENA: Yes. She was touched by our notes. Especially yours, Forrest.

RYDER (nuzzling): I’m glad you’re here this morning.

LENA: So am I. But I really did come to talk with Finn. I expected you’d be asleep. Why aren’t you? Didn’t it go well …

RYDER (turning LENA to face him, caressing her head): It went beautifully. Thank you. Scout and I walked Susan and Wendy back to the girls' school just before first bells.

LENA: Good. … So why …

RYDER (grazing the top of a breast with a hand): I just couldn’t sleep.

LENA (caressing RYDER’s chest): Neither could I.

RYDER: That bed really is too close.

LENA (smiling): Yeh, it is.

RYDER (taking LENA’s hands): Hungry?

LENA: Starved. What’s to eat?

RYDER (leading LENA to the kitchen, recovering his usual aplomb): Most of the makings of a proper breakfast. I stopped by a grocer’s yesterday. … (Taking things out of the refrigerator or pantry as he names them:) Eggs, sausage, tomatoes, toast, marmalade, milk, juice. Cheddar and mushrooms, if you’d like an omelette. And tea.

LENA: Brilliant. You plan to stop using the hall?

RYDER (smiling): No, but it's down to porridge. Last of the pancakes went yesterday. Thought I might cook for Finn this morning or tomorrow. Poor blighter stocks nothing but eggs, cold cereal and frozen dinners. … (Pulling out a frying pan, a grater and two kitchen knives:) Start the sausages and grate the cheese whilst I slice the mushrooms and tomatoes?

LENA: Sure. … (Pouring oil into the pan:) Wicked flattering that you’d give all this up for oatmeal just to avoid being alone with me.

RYDER (starting to slice the mushrooms): I’m scared, Lena.

LENA (turning on a low flame): That you’ll hurt me. I know. That’s why it really is flattering. And rather – well, never mind …

RYDER (half-laughing): Not just of that. … Care to tell me what you came here to talk about with Finn?

LENA (unwrapping the sausages): I want to ask him about the honor system.

RYDER (after a brief pause): I suspect a lot of us may be thinking about that this morning. Including a few who aren’t much better than I’ve been. That’s the problem, isn’t it?

LENA (starting to slice the sausages): Yes. … Can anything be done about it?

RYDER: Perhaps. There are traditions at this school older and stronger than the honor system.

LENA: Such as?

(RYDER looks at LENA questioningly, then stops cutting, downs his knife, and moves to the sink.)

RYDER (holding out a hand): Come here, first-year girl.

(LENA, pleasantly surprised but puzzled, sets down her knife and takes RYDER’s hand. He gently pulls her next to the sink, facing it, stands behind her, one hand holding each of hers in the sink. He moves their right hands, together, to turn on the cold water faucet, places all four of their hands under the running water. For a moment they stand here, hands under the water, looking out over the snow-covered garden at the lake, visible through a carefully landscaped gap in the trees.)

RYDER (softly, nuzzling her head): What is your name, child?

LENA: Lena.

RYDER (gently): No.

LENA (nuzzling his arm): Eleanor.

RYDER: Meaning?

LENA: “Compassionate.”

RYDER: Yes. From the Greek, ἔλεος – mercy, compassion, pity.

LENA: Forrest, it's not just …

RYDER: Shhhh. I got that last night. … Who gave you that name? When? How?

(LENA’s body tenses and straightens. She nods, then leads RYDER’s right hand in turning off the water. RYDER releases her, pulls away slightly. LENA turns around to face him.)

LENA: In winter?

RYDER: That’s what makes it work. Pain is rather the essence of punishment.

LENA (placing her hands on RYDER’s chest): Can you do this?

RYDER (taking a dishtowel, drying LENA’s hands): I think so – with my new job, and a little help.

LENA: Whose?

RYDER: Yours, for starters. I’d thought to phone you about that this morning. (He sets down the dish towel.)

LENA: What can I do?

RYDER (returning to his mushroom-slicing): After breakfast, ring up Pratt. Find out what time she’s leaving for Grottlesex. Tell her you’d like to see her off. Ask her to phone you if her plans change.

LENA (returning to her sausage-slicing): And then?

RYDER: We casually circulate that information. Leave the rest to me.

LENA: Trust you?

RYDER (after a pause): Yes, if you can.

LENA: I’m starting to.

 

*       *       *


	12. Scene 9 - Prizes and peanut butter

EXT - RAWLEY BOYS’, REAR LAWN AND GARDEN. DAY 6 – SUNDAY (DAY - MID-MORNING).

 

(The grounds are dotted with snow sculptures, ranging from traditional snowmen to a melting imitation of Canova’s _Cupid and Psyche_. In many places, the snow on the ground is thin, much of it having been used for the sculptures, and well-trodden.

KATE walks among the sculptures, appraising them, accompanied by a gaggle of students, including SCOUT, JAKE, JAN and ALICE. Most wear open parkas or jackets and snowboots. SCOUT and JAKE walk at the rear of the group, each with an arm wrapped around the other, talking.

On a nearby bench, WENDY and SUSAN sit with a jar of peanut butter and sticks, feeding squirrels. An attractive boy chats up WENDY. She’s polite but not responsive.

KATE slows near the Canova knock-off, walking around it and admiring it. JAN approaches KATE and talks with her while ALICE, with mock innocence, scoops up handfuls of snow and repairs melt-damage, playfully pretending to be furtive.

When the boy chatting up WENDY gives up and joins KATE’s group, JAKE gives SCOUT a light kiss and approaches SUSAN and WENDY. SCOUT smiles and nods to them, then moves closer to KATE.)

JAKE: Hi Susan, Wendy.

SUSAN: Hi, Jacqueline.

WENDY (sliding a bit away from WENDY and patting the bench between them): Join us?

(JAKE seats herself between them. SUSAN dips a stick into the peanut butter and hands it to JAKE.)

SUSAN (pointing at a squirrel): The fat, greedy one will eat out of your hand.

WENDY: The whole school will, this morning.

JAKE: Yeh, it’s kinda scary. But it’s what I’ve signed up for.

WENDY: Kate been keeping you out of trouble?

JAKE: Trying to. It’s not easy. (She gets up, grounds the stick in the snow not far from the bench.)

SUSAN: Has she picked a winner yet?

JAKE: Can’t make up her mind. … (Re-taking her seat on the bench:) You build one?

SUSAN: Yes and no. We built the snow fort on the back porch of the girl’s school.

JAKE: Good work. Loads more fun than a statue. The guys had a blast with it.

WENDY: Yeh, won’t win any prizes, but snow forts do draw guys.

JAKE: What was wrong with the cute one you just blew off?

WENDY: Nothing … except that he’s too nice to toy with.

JAKE: Not ready for nice?

WENDY: Not ready to give up Susan.

SUSAN: Besides, we had a very good night.

JAKE: With?

SUSAN: Forrest. A goodbye before he moves on to Lena.

WENDY: And he brought a friend.

SUSAN: A new friend. But he's a new Forrest. And they really care for each other.

JAKE: Scout?

WENDY (nodding): Beautiful, Jacqueline.

JAKE: I'm sure.

WENDY: Have you and Ham talked with Grace?

JAKE: Yes, and she’s on board. We’ll get them through this.

SUSAN: Good. … Whatever we can do to help, with that, or anything …

JAKE: Actually, there is something you might help with.

WENDY: Name it. 

JAKE: Ever been to Grottlesex?

SUSAN: No. I hear it’s pretty.

JAKE: It is. And I’ve made some good friends there.

WENDY: People you’ll miss?

JAKE: Yeh. Including two that Hamilton and I’d like you to meet.

SUSAN (looking at WENDY): Guys?

JAKE (nodding): Second-years, roommates in my dorm. They let Hamilton sleep on their floor, ‘cause my roommate the first three weeks of this term was … difficult.

WENDY: Heard how you and Anne turfed her out. Nicely done.

SUSAN: Hard to believe Ham slept on anybody’s floor for three weekends, though.

WENDY: Jacqueline didn’t quite say that he did.

JAKE: And they're still Hamilton's ostensible hosts when he visits Grottlesex. 

SUSAN: So these guys are kind. And?

JAKE: Bright, funny … and, as you’d say, fit. And they go well together. But I’d rather show you than tell you.

SUSAN: Why aren’t they already taken?

JAKE: They were, till recently. Their girls left them.

WENDY: Why?

JAKE (sheepishly): They got close to each other. Kinda my fault, and Hamilton's.

WENDY (exchanging eye-rolls with WENDY): Why are we not surprised?

SUSAN: Tell us.

JAKE: During orientation, Paul and Gordon were back at school early for sports training …

SUSAN: Ooooo, they have names!

JAKE: So my storytelling skills suck. … Anyway, they were sweet. They cleared out for a while each day and let Hamilon and me use their room. ‘Cause my roommate …

SUSAN: Was a gormless twat. … No hotels at Grottlesex?

JAKE: A nice one. But Hamilton said we needed to make friends at my school, not hide out off campus.

WENDY: He was right.

JAKE: The next weekend, Paul’s and Gordon’s girls were back at school, so Friday night, they let Hamilton and me spend the night in their room.

SUSAN: How refreshingly normal.

JAKE: But Gordon got caught. All-girls’ dorm, new housemother, first week on the job. She took it to the Headmaster.

WENDY (wincing): Ewww …

JAKE: He called in both guys …

WENDY: Why both?

JAKE: Oh, sorry. Because Paul had gone to the new housemother, told her everybody does what Gordon had done, said he’d done it the same night, too.

WENDY (looking at SUSAN): We’re interested. Keep going.

JAKE: Paul's girlfriend wasn't thrilled about that.

WENDY: Then she's a fool.

JAKE: Anyway, the Headmaster said he had to support his staff, and told the guys to cool their heels for a while. They were bummed …

SUSAN (sarcastically): No …

JAKE: So Saturday evening, after spending the afternoon with my new friend Anne, Hamilton and I hung out with them and ended up telling them how we’d gotten together and why I was at Grottlesex. Except for Anne, they’re the only students there we’ve told that to.

WENDY: Oh god …

JAKE: Hamilton and I didn’t see it coming, really. But when I started to go back to my room for the night, Paul and Gordon said no, stay, they’d crash in the common room. Of course, Hamilton and I weren’t having that. So finally we put the mattresses on the floor and all fell asleep together. Kinda nice.

SUSAN: No doubt.

JAKE: When Hamilton and I woke up Sunday morning, Paul and Gordon were gone. But they’d brought us some donuts and coffee.

WENDY: And that wasn’t the last weekend before you switched roommates, was it?

JAKE: No, second-to-last.

SUSAN (shooting an eye-roll toward WENDY): I think we can imagine the rest. Including that last weekend.

JAKE: Yeh. You might wanna hear about that from Paul and Gordon, or maybe from them and Hamilton and me all together, if we get that far. But they, uh, come highly recommended.

SUSAN: So at Grottlesex, there are two great, basically straight but close second-year guys who’ve grown even closer by getting close to you and Ham, and who need girls who can deal with that.

JAKE: That’s pretty much it.

WENDY (to SUSAN): There are buses.

SUSAN: And we have each other.

WENDY: And they have each other.

JAKE: Believe me, that is not a long-term solution. But you’re all only second-years, and their grades are good. If this works out, maybe they could transfer here next year. And this year … there may be ways around the transportation and “weekend privileges” problems.

SUSAN: Like what?

JAKE: Like, for starters, Fred and Steve will have cars here – and told Hamilton and me this morning they’d gladly let you use one sometimes. But first things first. Like meeting Gordon and Paul.

WENDY: Sure, when?

JAKE: Next weekend, if you’re free. Hamilton and I’ll be at Grottlesex, Anne’ll be here with Mark.

WENDY: We’re free. Everyone is. No one was expecting to be here.

SUSAN: When would you like us to show up?

JAKE: Friday evening. Bring your books and laptops.

WENDY (after exchanging perplexed looks with SUSAN): Wouldn’t it be better if we arrive Saturday morning? Give Gordon and Paul and us a few hours to get acquainted before bedtime?

JAKE: Oh, you won’t meet them till Saturday morning anyhow.

WENDY: Why not?

JAKE: You offered to date Hamilton and me. We said yes. We meant it. Friday night is ours.

SUSAN (after a pause): Jacqueline, you don’t have to do that.

JAKE: I want to – if you’ll have us.

SUSAN: Of course we’ll have you.

JAKE: Good. ‘Cause if I really were a guy, Hamilton and I wouldn’t be giving you to any other guys. And we need to show you that, once, before we do.

WENDY (holding JAKE’s hand): It's mutual.

JAKE: But if things go well, you’ll still have two nights with Paul and Gordon. Bella offered last night to let you use her pickup for the weekend, so you can drive back early Monday morning - with Hamilton, if you would.

WENDY: Our pleasure. You and Hamilton have pull.

JAKE: You and Susan have admirers.

SUSAN: So you’ll introduce us to Paul and Gordon Saturday morning?

JAKE: I think they’ll introduce themselves. Shy they’re not. Just eat in the dining hall and study in the common room with Hamilton and me. When they ask who you are, Hamilton and I will explain that you’re our date for the weekend, and tell them how we got you.

WENDY (amused): You’re going to make them beg?

JAKE: I think they’ll make me beg. We’re close, they’re guys, and they’re not stupid.

SUSAN: And if we like them, we make Hamilton beg?

JAKE: Yeh, if that’s the way they play it. Sound good?

SUSAN (laughing, setting the peanut butter down on the bench, wrapping an arm around JAKE): Very. Thanks, Jacqueline.

JAKE: Susan, what you and Wendy offered Hamilton and me Wednesday blew us away. I’m just trying to give you a chance to do something like that for two guys who really are guys. And to clean up one of the messes I’ve made.

WENDY: Girl, your messes always seem to clean up better than they were before you made them.

JAKE (smiling): ‘Cause I get help.

(In the background, LENA enters the garden through the gap in the hedge. SCOUT joins her. KATE stops talking with JAN and ALICE, walks toward SCOUT and LENA, looks toward JAKE.)

SUSAN: Looks like Kate’s on the move.

JAKE: Yeh, I should go.

(JAKE stands. WENDY and SUSAN rise with her.)

JAKE: Don't tell anyone but Bella that you're coming on Friday, not Saturday, OK? Especially Hamilton. 

WENDY: You don’t want us to drive Ham to Grottlesex?

JAKE (giving WENDY a quick kiss): No, I want you in my bed when he gets there.

SUSAN: You’re very wicked.

JAKE: Yeh, but I’m great fun. (She kisses SUSAN, then walks toward KATE.)

 

*       *       *


	13. Scene 10 - The Sunday Times

INT - THE FLEMINGS’ HOUSE, FAMILY DINING ROOM. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (DAY - LATE MORNING).

 

(The table is expanded and set for six, its maximum capacity. Three of the set places are vacant. Except for bread, butter, jam, coffee, milk, and sugar, no food or drink is yet on the table. The DEAN, KATE, and JAKE are seated, DEAN at the end of the table near the outer wall, JAKE to his left, KATE at the end of the table near the doors to the hallway and kitchen. They are just starting to drink coffee. The Dean, in tie, sweater-vest and worsted suit, scans the Sunday _New York Times_. The women, in blouses, sweaters and skirts, talk. Snow melts under bright sun in the back yard.)

JAKE: So both the winner and the runner-up are both knockoffs of real sculptures by the same guy?

KATE: Yes, and it was a tough choice. The “Cupid and Psyche” is the more difficult, and the better executed. But, as you saw, Cupid’s wings were melting - the wire mesh frame was showing. So the “Orpheus and Eurydice” had to win.

DEAN (from behind his newspaper): Timing matters. If you build your sculpture too soon in a thaw, you lose.

KATE: Yes, that’s what I had to face up to.

JAKE: It was sweet of Scout and Lena to ask you to assign their theater tickets to Alice and Jan anyhow.

KATE: And well-researched. … Steven, before they did that, Scout pulled out his phone and checked the William and Mary calendar to make sure Steve and Fred would still be on break that weekend.

DEAN (while continuing to scan the paper): He’s a Calhoun. It’s what they do.

JAKE: As well as Scout does it?

DEAN (smiling at JAKE over the top of his paper): Perhaps not quite. But you’ll meet more of them. Judge for yourself.

(Hamilton enters from the hallway, dressed in blazer, sweater-vest, slacks, and open-collared dress shirt. The left-hand side of his blazer bulges out a bit in front.)

HAMILTON: Sorry, couldn’t wait to ditch the slave collar. Spent half my time in chapel envying the guys in the stained glass windows their loose robes.

DEAN: As good a way as any to get through half of it. Take a seat.

HAMILTON (seeing the two vacant settings, not happy:) Oh. … (He shoots JAKE a frustrated glance. To KATE:) Who’s joining us?

KATE: Finn and a guest of his. A fellow Shakespeare enthusiast.

HAMILTON (still standing): If Finn’s guest drives a white van, he’s here. Saw it pulling in to the driveway as I came downstairs. Hope his taste in literature is better than in motor transport.

DEAN (folding up the newspaper, setting it down): I understand it’s rented – for some cargo hauling.

KATE (folding her napkin): Hamilton, would you please put on my CD of _Any Day Now_? A Joan Baez album. Non-classical section, under “B.”

HAMILTON: Sure. But isn’t that a strange selection for two Shakespeare fans, Mom?

JAKE (folding her napkin): No, Hamilton. … (Standing:) Mind if I go with him, Mrs. Fleming?

KATE (standing): Not at all.

DEAN (standing): Excuse us, please.

(The DEAN and KATE exit to the kitchen.)

JAKE (wrapping an arm around HAMILTON, walking him toward the hallway): Hammy, that album’s all Dylan songs. Baez and Dylan were lovers.

HAMILTON: Ah - and Dylan's a Shakespeare fan, too.

 

 

INT - THE FLEMINGS’ HOUSE, GROUND FLOOR HALLWAY. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (DAY - LATE MORNING).

 

(HAMILTON and JAKE, emerging from the family dining room, pass by the rear vestibule, inside which is a large dog bed - the names, “Faith,” “Hope,” and “Charity” painted on its frame.)

JAKE: And the lead song on that album is the one that takes off from the sonnet Will recited last night - and again in the pool this morning.

HAMILTON (taken aback, stopping): Our song? The one you played in New York, the night we first …

JAKE: Yes, boy. What Will and Bella know about us, your parents know, obviously. … (Pulling him into the family living room:) But they’re not just playing it for us. They’re playing it for Finn, too.

 

 

INT - THE FLEMINGS’ HOUSE, FAMILY LIVING ROOM. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (DAY - LATE MORNING).

 

(An embroidery kit and a first edition of Wilder’s _Theophilus North_ lie on the small round table flanked by two comb-back chairs.)

HAMILTON: Finn likes it?

JAKE (stopping): Hamilton, one evening early last summer, at dinner, Will was obsessing about that song. Even played for Scout and me, after dinner, the clip of [Dylan singing it to Donovan](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2D1xACyltQ) that I played for you in New York.

HAMILTON: Why?

JAKE: Will said the first line of it had been on Finn’s chalkboard while he wrote some essay for Finn.

HAMILTON: The one about why he needs to be at Rawley?

JAKE: Could be. He was trying to figure out why it was there.

HAMILTON: The Shakespeare allusion. … Will got it, obviously.

JAKE: With a little help. I suggested he check Shakespeare, 'cause Dylan's as nuts about him as Finn is - like, “Shakespeare, he’s in the alley." And at dinner a few days later, Will read sonnet twenty-three to Scout, Mark and me, and thanked me.

HAMILTON: You're useful.

JAKE: I try. … (Pulling HAMILTON into the library:) And that wasn’t the last time last summer I heard of that song.

 

 

INT - THE FLEMINGS’ HOUSE, LIBRARY. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (DAY - LATE MORNING).

 

HAMILTON: When else?

JAKE (heading toward two bookshelves full of CDs and the CD player): The day before the cotillion, right after Finn’s class – the one when we discussed Browning’s _Love Among the Ruins_.

HAMILTON: And Will said it meant that no one can stop people from falling in love … and you shot me that killer look.

JAKE (perusing the CDs): After class, as Mark walked me to lunch, he cited some lines from that sonnet …

HAMILTON: “O! let my looks be then the eloquence  
                    And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,  
                    Who plead for love, and look for recompense,  
                    More than that tongue that more hath more express’d”?

JAKE (pulling a CD case off the shelf): Yeh. He’d noticed our eye-play.

HAMILTON (softly): Jake, I’m so sorry …

JAKE (opening the CD case): Hamilton, don't. I needed it to be hard for you. … And then Mark said, “Hamilton will come ‘round. His love speaks like silence, too.”

(JAKE inserts the disk into the CD player, turns to face HAMILTON.)

JAKE (fingering HAMILTON’s blazer lapels): And he turned out to be so right … at the cotillion, and after. So in New York, that night – when you gave me a print of the first photo you’d ever shot of me, from the window above the school door – it hit me. The last line of that song described how you’d first seen me as perfectly as the first line described how you’d loved me and healed me – and I had to play it for you.

(HAMILTON leans in, kisses JAKE tenderly.)

HAMILTON (breaking off): Life is weird.

JAKE: That’s no lie. … (Punching the “play” button on the CD player:) Come on, let’s go meet Finn’s guest. (She pulls HAMILTON toward the parlor.)

 

*       *       * 


	14. Scene 11 - My love, she speaks like silence

INT - THE FLEMINGS’ HOUSE, FRONT VESTIBULE/HALLWAY. DAY 6 – SUNDAY (DAY - LATE MORNING).

 

(DEAN Fleming opens the front door, KATE beside him, as FINN escorts MONICA Pratt up the steps to the porch. FINN wears an open-collared white dress shirt, snug dark red sweater-vest and black woolen slacks under a tweed jacket and his open trenchcoat. MONICA wears a white turtleneck and full three-quarter-length grey woolen skirt under a loose, open black cardigan sweater and full-length black cashmere coat, no jewelry, light make-up, a black cloth purse slung from a shoulder.)

DEAN: Monica, Finn, good morning.

MONICA (kissing the DEAN lightly on the cheek): Good morning, Steven, Kate. Thanks again for arranging this.

DEAN: Our pleasure. Come in, let me take your coats. (MONICA and FINN enter, the DEAN shuts the door, helps MONICA out of her coat, hangs her coat and FINN’s.)

KATE: Hope you had a good night.

MONICA (looking at FINN): Very good. The guest cottage is charming. And the campus is lovely. I regret not having seen more of it last summer.

DEAN: Well, given the circumstances, that probably was for the best.

MONICA (removing her boots): Yes. … We have most unusual children, haven’t we?

KATE: That we do. Steven and I couldn’t be happier.

MONICA: Neither could …

FINN: We.

MONICA (smiling at FINN): Lovely pronoun.

FINN: Sadly underused.

MONICA: I particularly enjoyed Finn's tour of the girls’ school, which a handsome young man distracted me from seeing much of on my last visit.

FINN: I did no such thing …

MONICA (laughing, wrapping an arm around FINN): And the snow sculptures suggest you hired a good art teacher, Steven.

DEAN: We did. Our experience is that slightly unconventional hiring procedures can yield gratifying results - as our conversation yesterday evening may have indicated.

MONICA: It did. And I accept your offer. Which, as I said yesterday, is unbelievably kind.

DEAN: Outstanding. I’m sure you’ll do well. And take a large load off my plate.

KATE: You’re sure you won’t miss the stage?

MONICA: Of course I’ll miss it. You wouldn’t want a drama teacher who didn’t. And in time I may go back to it – when being told I’m too old for ingénue roles no longer hurts. But right now, other things matter more.

KATE: They do. And this life … the kids … can be very rewarding.

MONICA: I don’t doubt it. The few I've met have been delightful. Where are ours?

KATE: In the library, putting on some music for us. Shall we wait for them here in the hallway?

(KATE and the DEAN usher MONICA and FINN to the foot of the stairs. Baez’s rendition of “[Love Minus Zero/No Limit](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXG6adPo11w)“ begins to play.)

KATE: That’s their cue.

MONICA: If they don’t … dawdle.

DEAN: Much as they might like to, they won’t.

FINN (looking first at KATE, then at the DEAN): Nice cue. Thanks.

(JAKE and HAMILTON enter the hallway from the parlor.)

KATE: Hamilton, Jacqueline – please come say hello to our guest.

JAKE (dumbfounded): Mom?

MONICA: Hi, Jacqueline. Happy Thanksgiving – better late than never, I hope.

JAKE: Oh my god. … (She runs to MONICA. Hugging her crushingly:) Thank you. I’m so glad you’re here. Now. With Hamilton and his parents and me. I have so much to tell you.

MONICA: I’m glad to be here, Jacqueline. And even gladder that you’re here. But unless there’s much you haven’t told the Flemings, I doubt that you have much to tell me.

JAKE (chagrinned, disengaging slightly): So you know … (To KATE:) the whole story?

KATE: Were you looking forward to telling her yourself?

JAKE: Uh … no. But Mom, you’re not … ?

MONICA: I think I’m pretty much what Hamilton’s parents are. I’m here. And I’m grateful.

JAKE: Mom, you couldn’t ask for better people to parent with. Dr. Fleming, Mrs. Fleming, thank you. This is wonderful. And Hamilton …

HAMILTON: I’ve had nothing to do with this.

JAKE: You don’t seem surprised.

HAMILTON: I’m not – given that the parentals haven’t locked us into separate rooms these past three nights. Thank you for that, Mrs. Pratt. And welcome back to Rawley.

JAKE: Oh. … Yeh. … Thanks, mom. … (To HAMILTON:) And why did you not point out the obvious to your space-cadet girlfriend?

HAMILTON: Because I don’t have one. But I’ve liked having the bright young woman I hope to spend the rest of my life with obliviously happy for a few days. …

(The DEAN, KATE and FINN reflexively suck in breath, exchanging guarded glances.)

HAMILTON: And since I have our parents to thank for a lot of that, why cramp their style?

MONICA: Hamilton, it’s good to be back. And you have everything to do with this. Excuse me, Jacqueline.

(MONICA disengages from JAKE, straightens up into Broadway-actress posture, walks to stand in front of HAMILTON, looks him straight in the eye.)

MONICA (deliberately): I don’t know what to say to you. “Thank you”‘s not useful – I can’t thank you enough. “I’m sorry”‘s not accurate – I’m overjoyed. So I’ll just say I need you. We need you, Hamilton. That’s accurate. I hope it’s useful.

(HAMILTON, plainly moved, smiles and nods.)

MONICA (to KATE): I’m also hungry. That’s increasingly accurate with every passing minute. And I hope it’s useful to say it.

KATE (laughing): It is. The food’s this way.

(KATE leads them all back though the corridor toward the family dining room. As the Dylan song concludes, the camera pans, through the front window of the formal dining room, onto JAKE’s white snowmobile, parked in the snowbanked driveway in front of MONICA’s white cargo van.)

 

*       *       *  


	15. Scene 12 - Vita nostra brevis est

INT - CHARLIE BANKS’ GAS STATION, OFFICE. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (DAY - LATE MORNING).

 

(CHARLIE sits at the desk, reading toward the end of _Cryptonomicron_. WILL Krudski, still dressed, as yesteday, in flannel shirt and corduroy slacks, approaches from the street, knocks on the door.)

CHARLIE (smiling broadly): Come in, Will. (He stands up, walks to meet WILL at the door, shakes his hand.)

WILL: ‘Morning, Mr. Banks.

CHARLIE: Grab yourself a Coke and have a seat. (He nods toward the 1930s-vintage Westinghouse Standard Coke dispenser in the corner.)

WILL: You know I never pass up a Coke from that machine. A trip down Memory Lane. I’ll grab one on the way out … if my head’s still on my shoulders.

CHARLIE: Why shouldn’t it be?

WILL: Mr. Banks … I love Bella.

CHARLIE: That’s been obvious for … what? Ten years?

WILL: But now I’ve … we’ve … done something about it. That’s why Bella didn’t come home last night.

CHARLIE (walking to the chair behind his desk, seating himself): If you’re waitin’ for me to haul off and sock you, you’re gonna be standin’ there lookin’ stupid for a long time, son. Get us some Cokes and sit down, will ya?

(WILL takes out two coke bottles , opens them on the antique dispenser’s built-in opener, gives one to CHARLIE, sits in the chair in front of his desk.)

WILL: You’re not … you know …

CHARLIE: Can’t say I’m entirely happy with you. This was my morning to sleep late. Bella woke me up to tell me about you. And about her scholarship. Then she dragged me to church with her.

WILL: Oh … Sorry.

CHARLIE: You don’t seem to have hurt her singing voice. … After service, Bella took me out to the churchyard. My folks, since way back, are buried there. She sat us down in the gazebo and told me a story. About two friends of yours. … When that story comes alive, and calls you into it, Will, you go. I’ll do all I can to help Bella and you stay in it.

WILL (choking): Thank you, Mr. Banks. I’ll …

CHARLIE: No. No words. Just love her well, Will.

(A pause. WILL nods, swallows, stares at the desk.)

CHARLIE (after a pause): I got a call from one of those friends of yours this morning. You know what about, I suppose?

WILL: Yes, sir.

CHARLIE: Well, whadya think?

WILL (quietly): You won’t regret it, Mr. Banks.

CHARLIE: Neither will Grace. … I agreed, of course. Just asked her to come early, right after her spring term ends, so Bella can teach her what she needs to know.

(WILL continues to stare at the desk.)

CHARLIE: What’s wrong, Will?

WILL (softly): Mr. Banks, my dad’s dying. The doctors give him less than six months.

(A pause.)

CHARLIE: I’m sorry. … How’s your mom taking it?

WILL (struggling not to break down): That’s why I wanted to tell you. You said you’ve seen that I’ve loved Bella for ten years. I’ve got eyes, too, Mr. Banks. I’ve seen that you've loved my mom even longer …

CHARLIE: Will …

WILL: And even more hopelessly. She could use as much of that as you can give to help her through this.

CHARLIE: I’ll see she gets it, Will. Thanks for telling me. Susan wouldn’t have. … (Standing:) Is she home now?

WILL (rising too): She was ten minutes ago. I haven’t told her about Bella and me yet. Or about Bella’s scholarship. I’d like Bella to be there for that. But this morning, I did tell my folks … that other story. … (Losing control:) My dad told us … he was sorry … that he hasn’t loved us better.

CHARLIE (softly, clasping WILL’s shoulders): That’s always what we regret, at the end … whether we’re going or staying behind. … Be glad he feels it, and that you do, too, now, while there’s still time. … Have you told Bella?

WILL: No.

CHARLIE (slightly angry): Tell her. Now. And never … (He stops himself. Continuing, no longer angrily, but intensely:) Will, when a woman loves you, nothing hurts her so much as shutting her out, not letting her try to help. Bella’s upstairs … (Giving WILL a faint guy-to-guy-compliment grin:) Napping. Make some coffee and wake her up.

WILL: Yes, sir.

CHARLIE (disengaging from WILL and flipping a switch): There … the bell will ring upstairs if a car pulls in. Tell Bella where I’ve gone and why. And cover the pumps for me till she’s awake, OK?

WILL (recovering): Glad to. But I can only stay for half an hour. I’ve got the lunch shift at the diner.

CHARLIE: That’s time enough. (He moves toward the door.)

WILL: Thank you … and … Mr. Banks …

CHARLIE (stopping at the door): Yes, Will?

WILL: There’s a couple ways I could end up calling you “Dad.” I’d be real happy with either one. Or both.

CHARLIE: So would I. … But right now, you and the dad you’ve got need to make up for lost time. … And you’re what, eight years from graduating from college? Maybe thirteen years from a PhD? Fifteen years from being able to start a family? Life’s too short to wait that long, son. You get upstairs now. (He opens the door and walks out.)

 

*       *       * 


	16. Scene 13 - When you are old

INT - THE FLEMINGS’ HOUSE, FAMILY DINING ROOM. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (DAY - MID-DAY).

 

(The DEAN, KATE, HAMILTON, FINN, JAKE and MONICA are seated at the table, the DEAN at the end near the outer wall, MONICA to his right, JAKE to his left, KATE at the end of the table near the doors to the hallway and kitchen, HAMILTON next to MONICA, FINN next to JAKE. A platter of eggs scrambled with fried onions and mushrooms, a platter of sausages, a basket of blueberry muffins, a plate of cheeses, a bowl of fruit salad, and pitchers of juice and milk, and a half-eaten loaf of home-baked bread lie on the table. Brunch is in mid-course. Snow continues to melt under bright sun in the back yard.)

MONICA: … So it’s not likely to be a great film. But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. If I’d been home last August, you wouldn’t have come to New York, would you, Hamilton?

HAMILTON: Oh, I’d have come. I just wouldn’t have stayed at your house.

MONICA: So that your parents and I wouldn’t have occasion to talk.

HAMILTON: Uh - huh. … Good eggs, Mom.

MONICA: They are. … Steven, how did he persuade you and Kate to let him come – given that I wasn’t there?

DEAN: Oh, it wasn’t that hard. Your housekeeper was there, after all. Do try one of the muffins. The blueberries are from our freezer, picked wild last August. Every year Kate and I …

JAKE: Excuse me. … Dr. Fleming, you don’t need to coddle me. Please answer my mom’s question.

(The DEAN looks first at KATE, whose eyes lead him to look at HAMILTON, who, smiling softly, continues to cut a sausage.)

DEAN: Alright. … Hamilton didn’t ask our permission, Monica. He told us he was going. But he told us just enough to make that understandable.

KATE: He said Jake needed help. He reminded us of the history of school-switching, which of course we'd seen in Jake's application. Then he told us about the poster in Jake’s room, the computer-hacking hobby …

DEAN: Even, off the disciplinary record, about the motorbike, which he promised would not be coming back fall term.

HAMILTON: And I promised to phone you every day. And I did.

DEAN: So we didn’t object to his spending August break with “Jake.” We did suggest that they spend part of the break with us on the Vineyard. But Hamilton said that Jake had problems with authority, and that since I represent authority here, he'd like to try to help Jake over those problems first. That, too, sounded reasonable.

HAMILTON: And it was all true.

JAKE (to HAMILTON): We lied. We’ve been forgiven. Eat.

MONICA (to KATE): But didn’t you miss Hamilton here during orientation week, when he was at Grottlesex? I’ve heard he’s helpful with new students … and he’s certainly good with parents.

(JAKE rolls her eyes at MONICA.)

KATE: He is, but we don’t have an orientation week – Rawley was still on break all through Grottlesex’s. Our summer session serves as our orientation. It’s strongly recommended for all incoming first-years and transfers, and required for those who aren’t up to speed in one or more core subjects.

MONICA (wincing slightly): I should have remembered – you told me that last summer, didn’t you, Hamilton?

HAMILTON: Probably. But parents aren’t supposed to remember the tour-guide spiel. They’re supposed to be too busy looking at the grounds, the buildings, the kids …

JAKE: Not at the tour guide.

MONICA: In my experience, the guide can be the best part of the tour. Hamilton, last summer seemed positively … (To FINN:) What’s the word I’m looking for?

FINN: Distracting?

MONICA: Thank you, Finn, that does fit well. But you, today, were no less delightful. Perhaps not quite so distracting as Hamilton, but you do have one great advantage over him.

FINN: I’m not dating your daughter?

MONICA: Exactly.

JAKE: Mom!

MONICA: Sorry, no dignified matron roles are in my repertoire today. Steven, how is it that a good school that makes the old feel younger while it makes the young feel older?

DEAN: I think it’s the kids. They remind us that there’s always more growing to do, no matter how old we are. And that we can’t do it alone, we do it by loving one another. Kids know that naturally, just by being young. But we can recover it at any age. You can always go back to school, anytime, anyplace.

FINN (smiling at MONICA): “When you are old, and grey, and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book …”

JAKE (startled): The head of admissions at Grottlesex read that poem to me during my interview … (Gazing into HAMILTON’s eyes:) After I told her why I was applying.

MONICA: You told Grottlesex the truth … all of it?

JAKE: Lying in an admission application once was enough. And the truth worked.

KATE: Perhaps because it was true in more ways than one.

JAKE (to KATE): But does love have to end that way? By hiding its face amid a cloud of stars?

(KATE smiles, looks questioningly at FINN.)

FINN: I think Yeats means that if you love one person well enough, long enough, you come to love everyone and everything. It’s “a little sad” – love becomes less intense as it diffuses. But what better ending could you ask for?

MONICA (looking at FINN): Still, you can only act on that feeling by loving one person at a time. Each time you do, it’s a little like being young again. Each time you don’t, it’s a little like dying.

JAKE: So you just can’t help flirting with every single guy you meet?

MONICA: Not quite every one. My delightful summer tour guide, for example, now seems off limits. But I would like to give him a present. (She pulls a small wrapped package out of her purse, offers it to HAMILTON.)

HAMILTON: Ms. Pratt, you’ve already given me the best gift anyone could give me.

(HAMILTON glances at the DEAN, who nods. HAMILTON accepts the package, unwraps it, pulls out …)

JAKE (appalled): A cell phone? Oh Mom, you didn’t!

HAMILTON (elated): Not just any cell phone. A Nokia N8. Just released last month. The first serious camera in a phone. 12 megapixel resolution, Zeiss lens, zoom.

MONICA: As a gift to a shutterbug, it’s what came to this recovering cell phone addict’s mind.

HAMILTON: It’s perfect. Thanks, Ms. Pratt.

JAKE: Yeh, it is. Sorry, Mom, I’ve been a jerk.

MONICA: Maybe we both have. But we can both change.

HAMILTON: Well, now I have to change. I have to change what I was going to ask for for Christmas. (He passes the phone box and wrapping paper to KATE.)

KATE (setting the box and wrapping paper on the sideboard): Hamilton, that’s something that we might discuss. … Have you and Jacqueline thought about how you’d like to spend next summer?

DEAN: Your mother and I have been wondering whether you might like to take a language course in France. Or enroll in Oxford’s summer program for secondary school students.

(JAKE and HAMILTON exchange awed, appreciative smiles. JAKE nods slightly.)

HAMILTON: Mom, Dad, that’s really generous. And that might be great for the summer after next. But for next summer, I was thinking of taking courses here.

KATE: But … Jacqueline can’t take courses here next summer. Don’t you two want to spend the summer together?

HAMILTON: Yes, we do.

JAKE: I've been offered a summer job at a filling station in town. I’d only get room and board, but since I don’t know much about cars, I’m not worth more than that.

MONICA: A filling station …

JAKE: Yes. … (Looking at the DEAN): One that just found out that it won’t have a full-time live-in employee that it had expected to have next summer.

(The DEAN cocks an eyebrow at HAMILTON, who nods slightly.)

MONICA: Jacqueline, are you sure that’s what you want?

JAKE: Yes, Mom. And Hamilton and I’d like to stay here spring break, too. May we, Dr. Fleming?

DEAN: I’d be delighted.

KATE: So would I, Jacqueline – unless you have other plans, Monica.

MONICA: I don’t.

DEAN: But why, Hamilton? You and Jacqueline could visit your mother’s parents in Provence.

HAMILTON: We will, some break soon. But next spring, we’d like to take the state’s motorcycle riding course.

JAKE: So that each of us can legally carry a passenger on a bike. The guy I like to ride with has become a stickler about keeping me out of trouble.

FINN (to HAMILTON): Growing up?

HAMILTON (shrugging): It happens. … Pass the muffins, please?

JAKE (glumly): It happens faster when all the wild things a guy’s friend does stop being fun, because they turn out to be part of a …

HAMILTON: Sled-girl, you’re wilder than ever. Eat.

KATE: Well, for that course, at least one of you will need a car ride to an RMV office. I’d be happy to take you.

JAKE: Thanks, Mrs. Fleming. The dirt roads we’ve been riding on this fall are … well, dirty. And bumpy.

DEAN (displeased): The bike you had here last summer – it’s at Grottlesex, not in New York?

JAKE: It is, but …

DEAN (to HAMILTON): I thought were you concerned about keeping Jacqueline out of trouble.

KATE: He is, Steven. That’s why he bought her bike.

DEAN (to HAMILTON): You bought Jacqueline's bike.

HAMILTON: As soon as she started at Grottlesex.

DEAN (to KATE): You co-signed that?

HAMILTON: No, Dad. In this state a sixteen-year-old can own a motor vehicle, and insure it, and register it, all by himself. I needed parental consent to get to get a motorcycle driving permit, but I already got that last summer.

DEAN (eyes narrowing): Yes, right after the cotillion, when you suddenly decided what you wanted as your belated present for the birthday you'd declined to celebrate two weeks earlier.

JAKE: And which I never heard about.

HAMILTON: Because what I wanted most then was not to be gay.

DEAN (to KATE): So how did you find out about his buying the bike? And when?

KATE: In late late September. Hamilton asked my permission. Not to buy it, but to drive it and let "Jake" drive it. 

JAKE: For three weeks, Dr. Fleming, from the day we got to Grottlesex until I turned sixteen and my Maine permit became valid in here Massachusetts, Hamilton kept that bike locked at a service garage in Grottlesex.  

HAMILTON: Dad, I wanted permission to unlock it because I know it's dangerous. I didn't ask you because I didn't want to involve you in circumventing another school's rules.

KATE: But I'm just a ditsy, head-in-the-clouds art teacher and doting mother, Steven. Totally disavowable. 

DEAN: And you agreed because?

HAMILTON: Because I begged her to, Dad. I …

KATE: Hamilton, let me, please. … Steven – Hamilton told me he’d already gotten Jake to stop computer hacking, and doing even stupider things - he wouldn’t say what. But he said he couldn’t ask Jake to give up the bike, too – that it’s part of who Jake is, that losing it would crush his friend.

JAKE: Hamilton’s doing that for me meant a lot, Dean Fleming. But if keeping the bike at Grottlesex is a problem, now that you know about it, we can keep it in New York.

MONICA: Steven, I’m sorry. That was my last week of filming in L.A. When my attorney mentioned, in a phone call, that Jacqueline wanted to sell her bike to her boyfriend to avoid violating her school’s rules, I agreed to let him sign it over for me without even thinking of your position.

HAMILTON: Mrs. Pratt, there’s no reason why you should have. Dad, this was my idea. So if you have a problem with it …

DEAN: I don’t. My working relationship with the Headmaster of Grottlesex could survive his knowing that my wife is soft-hearted and that my son is in love. But I do have to work with him. So now that I know about this, I’d appreciate it if you’d please arrange to bring the bike here at your earliest convenience. You can store it in our garage.

JAKE: You’ll let us keep it here till next fall?

DEAN: I’ll let you keep it here as long as you want.

JAKE: You can do that?

DEAN: Why not?

JAKE: Next fall, if I’m enrolled here and living on campus, won’t Hamilton’s owning that bike be what it is now at Grottlesex - a circumvention of school rules?

DEAN: No. It’s a circumvention of Grottlesex’ rules because Hamilton keeps it there all the time even though he doesn’t live there and isn’t there most of the time. It’s there so that you can ride it when he’s not there – otherwise he’d keep it here and ride it to and from there instead of taking the bus. But Hamilton does live here. Even if he only rides it with you, his keeping it here is defensible.

JAKE: Thank you, Dean Fleming. … (To HAMILTON:) Again, you don’t seem surprised.

HAMILTON: Again, I’m not - although I am grateful. Thanks, Dad. … Some fruit salad, Mrs. Pratt?

JAKE: So you knew … when you bought my bike … that you were making it possible, not just for us to keep it safely at Grottlesex, but also at Rawley if I could transfer back here?

HAMILTON: I knew my Dad could let us, if he wanted to. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to ride it whenever you want.

DEAN: Exactly. Jacqueline, if you transfer here, you’ll only be able to ride the bike on free weekends and during breaks – times when you might visit your boyfriend at his home if he didn’t live in town. The same times when you can sleep in this house. … And Hamilton, you’ll only be able to ride it on free weekends and breaks, too, if you move into the dorms – did Mark mention that possibility to you?

HAMILTON: This morning, Dad. Thanks, that I didn’t expect. … Could I do that without keeping some other kid from attending this school?

DEAN: Yes. We can use faculty housing for overflow. There are always some kids who prefer living with a family.  And any faculty family can cut any other student more slack than I can cut you.

HAMILTON: Then … although Jacqueline and I will still want to spend a lot of time here, with you and Mom …

KATE: Hamilton, we understand. So you’ll move into the dorms next fall?

HAMILTON: Mom – if Scout, Will, Mark and I can get a quad, I’d like to move on campus next summer.

KATE: Next summer? But Hamilton, next summer, while Jacqueline’s not enrolled yet, you can both sleep here – or ride your bike together – anytime you please, if you live here with us.

DEAN: No need for discretion. No sneaking out after lights-out, no getting up to sneak back in before first bells. Breakfast downstairs, not a hundred yards away …

HAMILTON: I know. But I’d like to be with Scout.

DEAN: With Scout.

JAKE: Same reason I’m taking the job at the filling station, Dr. Fleming.

MONICA: Scout Calhoun, the Senator’s son?

JAKE: Yes, Mom.

KATE (after exchanging a worried glance with the DEAN): Is Scout alright?

HAMILTON: Never better, Mom. But he’s trying to do something hard.

JAKE: Something you should hear about from Scout. Hamilton and I’d like to try to help him.

DEAN (to HAMILTON): Then I'll see that you get your quad.

HAMILTON: Thanks, Dad. But helping Scout isn't the only reason Jacqueline and I'd like to be here next summer. 

JAKE: For sure. There’s something else I’d really like to do next summer, too, with Hamilton - if I can.

HAMILTON: Yeh … Finn, could we ask you a couple of questions?

FINN: I haven’t bitten a student yet.

HAMILTON: First, could a kid who attended Grottlesex spring term, but will attend Rawley next fall, cox crew at Rawley next summer, if not enrolled at any school then? Second, could a girl cox boys’ crew?

FINN: Hamilton, you already know that the answer to both questions is “yes.”

HAMILTON: Finn, what makes you think that?

FINN: Stewart Prescott's asking me this morning, as I was showing Monica around campus, whether he could start working out on the ergs this term in order to be ready to row in Jacqueline's shell next summer. … You just want me to tell your parents that you’ve done your homework right, don’t you?

(JAKE grins.)

FINN: Well, you have. Tell them what you found.

JAKE (digging a piece of paper out of a pocket): OK. The [_New England Interscholastic Rowing Association's_ rules](http://www.neirarowing.org/documents/bylaws.pdf) incorporate the [_U.S. Rowing_ rules](http://www.usrowing.org/About/RulesofRowing.aspx) for junior rowers. Rule 4-108 says a female coxswain may compete in men’s events. And rule 4-104 defines a junior rower as anyone nineteen or younger who is or has been enrolled in secondary school as a full-time student seeking a diploma.

HAMILTON: You needn’t be currently enrolled to be a junior rower, or to compete in any race except the Lake Quinsigamond regatta at the end of spring term. And nothing says that the school you row for has to be the one at which you most recently were enrolled.

FINN: Exactly. To have a cox who most recently attended another school would be unusual, but that’s up to the school, that is, to the Dean.

DEAN: If Jacqueline has been offered and has accepted readmission to Rawley for the fall term, our claim on her will be at least as good as Grottlesex’s.

JAKE: I’ve tried to keep up, coxing girls’ JD crew at Grottlesex.

FINN: I’d be delighted to have you back, Jacqueline. As I expect you know, our current JD cox, Harry Johnson, would rather be rowing, and could be, next year. And men’s crews that have had women coxes – including Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard – reportedly have found them … inspiring.

HAMILTON: Works even better without a binder.

JAKE: Yeh. … Thanks, Finn, Dean Fleming.

KATE: Jacqueline, is this really what you want? The Calhouns aren’t poor. Scout could go with you and Hamilton to Europe next summer. And if Scout’s problem is a girl, so could she. Are you sure you want to spend the summer here pumping gas? Is crew that important to you?

JAKE: It has its attractions, Mrs. Fleming. Especially with Hamilton as stroke. And it comes with an on-the-lake lit course. … (Smiling at FINN:) Uncredited, in my case, but free. It’s beautiful, erotic, and edifying, all at once. … But none of that – not the crew, not even helping Scout – is the best part of being here next summer.

MONICA: What is?

JAKE: Just being here at Rawley, Mom. This is Hamilton’s home. Loving this school is part of loving him. Anywhere else, he seems too good to be true. Here he doesn’t – because this whole school does. It’s full of kids trying to love one another impossibly well, and somehow giving one another enough miracles to keep them all trying. That’s what I need to learn to do. And here is where I need to start.

FINN: I’d say you made a pretty good start yesterday, Jacqueline – with Ryder.

HAMILTON (to JAKE): As I said then, you didn’t have to do that. On Ryder, it’s all wasted.

FINN: You couldn’t be more wrong, Hamilton. Something good has already come out of it.

HAMILTON: What?

DEAN: Sorry, that’s all we’re at liberty to say. But Finn’s right, and Jacqueline should know that.

JAKE: If I’ve helped, thank you for giving me a chance to do that, Dr. Fleming. What you’re trying to do for Forrest – that’s Rawley.

HAMILTON: What do you see in him, Jacqueline?

JAKE: Other than the second-best male body in the school? Me, Hamilton. What I see is me. I see what I might have become, without you. If I’d kept on despairing of love, I might have started trying to hurt everyone who doesn’t. Can’t you see that, too? And can’t you find for Ryder even a crumb of the compassion you’ve given me?

HAMILTON: Remind me to keep you around, beautiful. … No, I didn’t see that. … Maybe because what I see in Ryder is … me. Me totally misused and perverted. He’s got all the same gifts I have. But he uses them all wrong.

JAKE: He needn’t, Hamilton.

HAMILTON: That’s what’s frightening. Watching him, Jake, I feel like Jekyll watching Hyde. It’s a nightmare. … I think I’ve wanted to believe Ryder’s just inherently evil. Because if Hyde can turn into Jekyll, then Jekyll can turn into Hyde. … If I were hurt enough, I might become Ryder. That’s terrifying.

JAKE: Yes, it is.

(A pause. JAKE and HAMILTON lock eyes.)

KATE: Jacqueline, Hamilton … if you two would like to be alone for a few minutes, feel free to excuse yourselves.

JAKE: Mrs. Fleming, of course we’d like that, but it’s not what we need. Hamilton and I have been way too alone, even when we’re together. We need more than each other and a few close friends. We need our families, our teachers, a school, a town. We need to make our love more diffuse, even if that makes it less intense, even if it’s a little sad. And we can’t wait until we’re old and gray. We need to start now.

MONICA: What’s the rush?

JAKE (after a pause): Miracles are given to be shared. If you keep them to yourself, they die, and part of you dies with them. Hiding ours has been hard, Mom – especially for Hamilton. And here at Rawley, where we were given ours, is where we need to start sharing it.

DEAN (after a pause): Hamilton?

HAMILTON: Yes, Dad?

DEAN: Since hearing what you did last summer, I’ve often wondered whether I could have done it. I doubt that I could have done it so well. But one thing’s increasingly clear to me.

HAMILTON: What?

DEAN (looking at JAKE): I would have tried.

 

*       *       *  


	17. Scene 14 - Over the rainbow

EXT – RAWLEY ACADEMY BOATHOUSE. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (DAY - AFTERNOON).

 

(SCOUT sits on the bench on the boathouse porch, overlooking the lake, playing a loose imitation of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s rendition of “[Over the Rainbow](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I)“ on his harmonica. CHARLIE’s copy of _Little Women_ , bookmarked almost at the end, and a couple of covered paper cups, are on the bench next to him. BELLA approaches him from behind, stops, listens. Both wear only jackets and scarves; it’s a relatively warm, sunny afternoon. When SCOUT pauses to correct a mistake, BELLA kisses him on the cheek from behind.)

SCOUT (looking up, smiling): Glad you could come. Coffee?

BELLA (sitting down next to him): I could use some, thanks. … (Taking a cup:) Grace says hi. She took my shift at the pumps. Didn’t think our good-bye to Jacqueline would be the best venue to make a fashion statement.

SCOUT (pocketing his harmonica): She’s right – although I told Jacqueline this morning.

(BELLA cocks an eyebrow.)

SCOUT: She survived. … Why’d you want to meet so early … and without Will?

BELLA: I need your help.

SCOUT: Anything, anytime, Bella.

BELLA: I know, Scout. … And I’ve got some news – mostly good.

SCOUT: So do I.

BELLA (sipping her coffee): Mine could take a while. Let’s hear yours first.

SCOUT: OK. The DNA test. We have an appointment at Mass General on Monday, December eighteenth. First business day of Christmas break here and at Edmund.

BELLA: You’ll spend the weekend in the dorm?

SCOUT: At the Flemings’, with my family. My dad phoned this morning to tell me that. Apparently the Senate will start Christmas recess that weekend.

BELLA (smiling): Good. So what time that Monday is our DNA test?

SCOUT: At eleven. Maybe we could kick around Boston afterwards.

BELLA: I’d like that. I’d like an insider’s tour of the Calhoun clan _alma mater_ , preppy. And to use your dad’s Harvard Club membership for dinner.

SCOUT (surprised and pleased, taking BELLA’s hand): My pleasure, townie. There’s nothing in Beantown I’d rather do with you. Maybe with Jacqueline and Ham? They’ll spend the first weekend of Christmas break in Boston, with Ham’s grandmother.

BELLA: And his godfather.

SCOUT: Dr. Hotchkiss?

BELLA: Ham says they’ve liked each other, like, forever. He was best man at her wedding. And his wife’s been dead three years now. Ham and his mom think it’s time. But his dad’s useless.

SCOUT: At setting up his own mother? Well, yeh …

BELLA (pensively): Not all guys are.

SCOUT: At least one will even double-date with his grandmother?

BELLA (smiling): Yeh.

SCOUT: OK. … So, dinner for four at the Harvard Club, over a tale of sexagenarian romance?

BELLA: Sounds charming.

SCOUT: It does. And we’ll all come back by train – although my dad will drive you and me into Boston in the morning.

BELLA: Why? Is he going into Boston that morning anyhow?

SCOUT: Kinda hard to get a paternity test at Mass General without going to Boston.

BELLA: You’re kidding.

SCOUT: He made the appointment.

BELLA: When?

SCOUT: Friday. I phoned him, walking back here from your house Thanksgiving night, to tell him about our after-dinner conversation. 

BELLA: But … I thought you and I were getting tested.

SCOUT: Did I ever say that?

BELLA: No, not quite … but why test your dad rather than you?

SCOUT: Because DNA half-sibling tests are way less conclusive than DNA paternity tests. Otherwise, I’d have suggested that we get one last summer.

BELLA: You thought of this last summer?

SCOUT: I was looking for an easy way to find out for sure – one that didn’t involve talking with my dad or your mom. There wasn’t any.

BELLA: Scout – I can’t run off to get a paternity test with your dad behind your mom’s back. She’d never forgive me – and she’s the mother of my sister’s boyfriend now.

SCOUT: Not to worry. My dad told my mom who Charlie thinks your dad is last night. Turns out your mom’s standing in for her at Rawley functions was her idea. She’s the one who asked your mom to do that.

BELLA: So I can’t back out. We owe your mom a paternity test.

SCOUT: That’s right. Not to mention your mom.

BELLA: My mom?

SCOUT: My dad phoned her yesterday, for the first time in years.

BELLA: Why?

SCOUT: Because a paternity test can’t establish with certainty that my dad isn’t your dad unless your mom is tested, too. So when we go to Mass General, your mom’s blood sample will already be there.

BELLA: Oh my god …

SCOUT: Bella, your mom’s happy to do it. She told my dad that she never told anyone, including her father, that my dad fathered you. Apparently her dad jumped to that conclusion for the same reasons that Charlie found it credible.

BELLA: And your dad believes her?

SCOUT: Totally. He said your mom would never have told anyone that he fathered you. He’s obviously liked and trusted your mom since high school. My parents are thrilled that her daughter’s my girlfriend. And they’re having a hard time believing she abandoned her kids.

BELLA (after a pause): Scout – if my grand-dad and my dad – I mean, Charlie – both assumed that your dad fathered me, then half this town …

SCOUT: May harbor the same suspicion, yes – although when Charlie married your mom everyone shut up about it. Finn, for example, didn’t buy that Charlie’s your biological father.

BELLA: He didn’t?

SCOUT: His inscription in _Little Women_ is duly ambiguous, but that dash between “on becoming a father“ and “again” is gratuitous, unless …

BELLA: Oh god, you’re right – it’s praising my dad for raising another guy’s daughter. You think my dad told Finn?

SCOUT: No, I think Finn knew Charlie wasn’t dating your mom nine months before you were born. And I think your little sister has a steel-trap mind.

BELLA: Yeh …

SCOUT: But Grace isn’t the only smart person in this town, Bella. That’s part of why my dad wants to get a paternity test. He needs to put this behind him as much as we do.

BELLA: Then you and I are on for Boston the first Monday of Christmas break. … And that kinda ties in with some of my news.

SCOUT: Let’s hear it.

BELLA (setting her coffee down on the bench): Mind if I start with the part that’s hardest to tell – to you?

SCOUT: Not at all.

BELLA: Then just listen, Scout. Don’t congratulate me. And don’t express surprise, whether it’s real or feigned. In return, I won’t ask whether you had anything to do with this. OK?

SCOUT: With what?

BELLA: I’ve been offered a full scholarship to Rawley. Newly funded by an anonymous donor. Assuming I can pass the entrance exam. … I’m going to accept it, Scout. And Scout, I’ll try to use this gift as well as you use what you’ve been given. That’s no small challenge.

(A pause. SCOUT remains poker-faced.)

BELLA: Well?

SCOUT: I’m really pleased you think I use what I’ve been given well, Bella. That means a lot to me.

BELLA (slightly exasperated): Scout …

SCOUT: And I’m glad you’re accepting the scholarship. Glad I don’t have to try to talk you into it. But that’s not the good news I was hoping to hear.

BELLA: So you knew.

SCOUT: That you’d be offered a scholarship? Oh yes. Finn told me yesterday morning. He thought you might not accept it unless I assured you that it doesn’t come from my family. So he warned me to protect to donor anonymity regardless of whether I know who the donor is or not. He rehearsed me, in fact. How’m I doing?

BELLA (starting to stand up): Much too well. I thought you might be happy for me.

SCOUT (gently pulling her back down next to him on the bench, enfolding her in his arms): Bella, I’m overjoyed. Way past excited. Surely you’ve felt that way?

BELLA: Yes, I have. (She rests her head on SCOUT’s shoulder, looking out over the lake with him.)

SCOUT: What made you decide to accept?

BELLA: Jacqueline. How loved she feels now, how whole she is. You stop questioning your own miracle when you see someone else’s.

SCOUT: Yeh … you do.

BELLA: Scout, are you still beating yourself up for not having given me the kind of miracle that Hamilton gave her?

SCOUT: No … not any more.

BELLA: Good. Because Scout, the problem wasn’t that you’re not as loving as Hamilton. Just the opposite – it’s that you’re so very like him. But I haven’t had Jacqueline’s problems. Losing my mom hurt me – but nowhere near enough to make me do things like switch schools every year, computer-hack for a hobby, or cross-dress at an all-boys’ school.

SCOUT: Yeh, Jacqueline was on the brink.

BELLA: And Hamilton saw that. He didn’t see she was a girl, but he saw what mattered. Her state was desperate. Mine wasn’t. If it had been, you’d have battered down the gates of hell to save me. You’d have done whatever it took.

SCOUT (genuinely flattered): You really think so?

BELLA: I know so, Scout. You need to be needed no less than Hamilton does. You need somebody who’s been hurt as badly as Jacqueline has. Who’s despaired of love as hopelessly as Jacqueline did. Who’s been acting as self-destructively as she was.

SCOUT: Bella, I think I’ve found someone like that.

BELLA: I know, Scout.

SCOUT: Grace is going to be … I need to find some word other than “amazing” to use with that name, don’t I? And yes, she does need somebody a lot like me, far more than you do, Bella. But have you thought about why?

BELLA: Grace was hurt worse when our mom left.

SCOUT: Because no Will Krudski was there for Grace. The reason you don’t need saving is that you were saved when you were six. The guy who did that has always been yours, Bella, and always will be. The guy Jacqueline told me you finally took last night.

BELLA (quickly standing, turning away from SCOUT): Oh god …

SCOUT (standing, holding Bella’s shoulders): Tell me it was all you’d hoped it would be. Tell me you love him. That’s the news I want to hear. Because Will’s worth more than any scholarship.

BELLA: You gave Will the red-hots. … Hamilton told you …

SCOUT (smiling, releasing her): Good. And?

BELLA: It was wonderful, Scout. And yes, I’m head over heels.

SCOUT: I’m glad, beautiful. Best wishes, with all my heart.

BELLA: Scout … Will and I want so much not to hurt you …

SCOUT: I know. And Grace will heal me. But that I’ve been hurt is my own fault. I should have known Will loved you from the day I first met you two, the first day of summer session. But I didn’t want to know. So I asked Will the wrong question. I should have asked what he felt for you emotionally.

BELLA: You didn’t?

SCOUT: No. I asked whether he’d ever been involved with you sexually. He said he’d known you forever, but had been too busy lusting after a three-hundred-pound school nurse. By giving me a dumb answer, he was telling me I’d asked a dumb question. Telling me that it wasn’t what he’d done, but what he wanted to do, that mattered. All I had to do was listen, Bella. But I wouldn’t.

BELLA: But how long …

SCOUT (caressing her face): … Have I known that you loved him back? Since the day Jacqueline left. When you told Will not to disappear on you, the way she’d just disappeared on Hamilton. The day after you felt compassion for Will, and saw, in Hamilton, what that could grow into.

BELLA: So you knew even before St. Martin. … And all that time, you’ve just kept on being the perfect friend.

SCOUT: Bella, I love Will too. A drop of kindness – a little assurance from a guy who’s had everything handed to him on a silver platter that yes, he really is good enough to be here – gives him the courage to go out and try to love a whole world that he knows mostly isn’t going to love him back. When he almost gets expelled, or gets thrown out on the street, he just picks himself up and keeps on trying.

BELLA: I know.

SCOUT: And when the girl he’s loved since he was six years old doesn’t get that he’s the one for her, and takes up first with his roommate then with his closest friend from town, he just keeps on loving all of us and hoping for the best for all of us. How could I possibly stop loving him just because she finally wakes up? How could I ever stop loving him at all, so long as he is what he is?

(BELLA pushes SCOUT against a porch post, wraps herself around him, kisses him with everything she’s got. SCOUT reciprocates fully, then slowly disengages, handing BELLA a coffee, taking the other himself.)

SCOUT: I knew that if I could turn Will into a beautiful girl by kissing him, it would be the best kiss I’ve ever had. Hamilton would be proud of me.

BELLA: Will wasn’t bad as a gorgeous, selfless preppy who’s not afraid to say exactly what he feels, either. Most of the time he’s too shy to do that.

SCOUT: Thanks. But Bella, the gist of what I’ve just said to you, about Will and you and me, I said to him yesterday morning. Hasn’t he told you that?

BELLA: Not a hint. He did give me a red-hot, right before we first made love. But he didn’t tell me the red-hots were from you.

SCOUT: He wanted to let me speak for myself. … The guy’s got class, Bella.

BELLA: Yes, he does. And I’m really glad I heard it from you, Scout. … I just hope I can love Will better than I loved you. I did that so badly. I know we were dealt a crappy hand, but …

SCOUT: Bella, you can’t love someone well when you’re in love with someone else, but don’t know it. You didn’t know it until you saw Will wandering the street with all his possessions in a box, and you didn’t begin to understand it until Jacqueline and Ham spent that day with you and Will, did you?

BELLA: No, stupidly.

SCOUT: And much as we thought we were in love, we weren’t. We weren’t willing to sacrifice or even risk anything for it. I wasn’t willing really to confront my dad. You weren’t willing to confront Charlie or ask your mom. Grace made it so obvious Thanksgiving night, when she showed us how easy it would have been to find out the truth, didn’t she?

BELLA: Yeh. My little sister … I hope you can handle that.

SCOUT: I’ll get help. … So what we were dealt wasn’t a crappy hand, Bella. What we were dealt was a miracle. The notion that we have the same dad turns out to be wrong. But it stopped something that wouldn’t have lasted, but would have kept you from the guy you should be with for as long as it did last.

BELLA: A blessing in disguise?

SCOUT: A true illusion. An illusion that saved Will and you and me from wasting who knows how many months or years of our lives. An illusion that seemed to make you and me not right for each other. And we weren’t, but for other reasons that we never saw till the illusion made them clear to us.

BELLA: Yeh … I was wrong to say we lost a true love. That’s what Jacqueline was telling me yesterday: that if it’s true, you can’t lose it – it’s not over even if it ends.

SCOUT: That “loss of a true love” is – as Will might say – an oxymoron?

BELLA: Yeh. But Jackie doesn’t talk like that, thank god. How I’ll deal with a guy who does, I’m not sure.

SCOUT: By learning to do it as well as he does, and using it to shoot him down when he does?

BELLA (grinning): Sounds like a plan.

SCOUT: And Bella, something good may come of our falling for each other and leading Charlie to tell us that that he thought my dad was your dad, too. Something good for a lot of people - including us.

BELLA: What?

SCOUT: I think Rawley will go co-ed, Bella. Soon.

BELLA (confused): How?

SCOUT: My dad’s dad’s opposition is the reason why this school still isn’t co-ed. He wasn’t always like that. But his views about sex changed about the time I was born. Nobody has ever understood why. But now … I’m pretty sure my grand-dad jumped to the same conclusion as your mom's dad and Charlie.

BELLA: Your dad told you that?

SCOUT: No. I think my grand-dad never talked about it with my dad. And I’m pretty sure my dad hasn’t seen it yet – I think he can’t imagine that his dad would suspect him of cheating on his wife.

BELLA: Your grand-dad knew that my mom was standing in for my mom at Rawley functions?

SCOUT: He’d have attended some of them himself. And I have other reasons, reasons I’d rather not share with anyone, to think that he thinks my dad fathered a child out of wedlock after he was married.

BELLA: And you’ll tell him he’s wrong.

SCOUT: I’ll give him a copy of the DNA test results for Christmas – privately.

BELLA (placing her hands on SCOUT’s chest): You’re going to make an old man very happy.

SCOUT: A rich, powerful old man. And I think the results may be a little like Ebenezer Scrooge – especially for my dad and for this school. My grand-dad’ll feel guilty, he’ll want to make it good.

BELLA: By taking Rawley co-ed?

SCOUT: It’s something he planned to do when he was younger, when the old asylum shut down and he bought it and turned it into Rawley Girls’ …

BELLA: Calhoun Hall.

SCOUT (nodding): And he’ll want to do it fast, while he’s still around to see it. And my dad and Ham’s dad will be only too happy to help.

BELLA: Have you told Hamilton?

SCOUT: Ham kinda told me. He said Tuesday that my grand-dad might change soon – so much that what Jacqueline and Ham did last summer might not bother him much.

BELLA: Our brilliant brooder had already seen it?

SCOUT: Suspected, at least – probably since our trip to Carson. He’s never believed my dad cheated on my mom, but it was obvious that Charlie had some reason to believe what he told us. That, plus the timing … If I’d trusted my dad more, I might have seen it myself.

BELLA: Scout – Hamilton had cause to see it. You didn’t. Your grandfather could have been an obstacle to bringing Jacqueline back here – but he was irrelevant to the question of whether you and I were half-siblings. And you scheme plenty well, preppy.

SCOUT: Do I?

BELLA: When you have reason. Like your getting me to agree to a DNA test by letting me think I’d be getting tested with you – not with your dad.

SCOUT: Would you have agreed to that?

BELLA: You know I wouldn’t. That’s why you tricked me. But it was well done.

SCOUT: Thanks.

BELLA (sitting back down on the bench): Your dad could find it hard to deal with what his dad will have to tell him after Christmas.

SCOUT (sitting down beside her): I know. My parents could use Ham’s parents’ help … if I can tell the Flemings the whole story. May I - when we have the DNA test results?

BELLA: Scout, you can tell them now.

SCOUT: I should wait till we know for sure.

BELLA: Scout, we need a DNA test. We need proof. But I'm sure – I phoned my mom Friday morning.

SCOUT: Thank you.

BELLA: I didn't do it for you. I phoned her to make sure that I'm not related to Will. Something about not making the same mistake twice.

SCOUT: Smart girl. … So that's the rest of your news - your mom told you who your biological dad is? 

BELLA: No. I didn’t ask her.

SCOUT: Then how are you sure that he’s not my dad?

BELLA: He’s shorter, stockier, different hair color, different accent …

SCOUT: You’ve met him?

BELLA: So have you, Scout.

SCOUT: When?

BELLA: Most recently? Two Saturdays back, when he had you take a picture of him, me and his freshly-lubed black pick-up in front of our new gas globes.

SCOUT: The curly-haired red-headed guy who’s studying for his plumber’s license … Pete? He’s your dad?

BELLA: The man who raised me’s my dad, Scout. Pete feels as strongly about that as I do, thank god. But Pete's been bringing his truck in about once a month since August, always during my Saturday morning shift, for routine things like an oil change, wheel alignment, new spark plugs …

SCOUT: And reading plumbing manuals over coffee at the diner while he waits.

BELLA: He came by yesterday morning to tell me – over Cokes at Fanny’s, while Grace covered the pumps for me – that half my genes are from him … and that he’s no relation to either of Will’s parents, and never messed with Will’s mom.

SCOUT: Your mom told him you’d asked?

BELLA: Pete’s been with her since not long after she left my dad – since as soon as my dad agreed to a divorce.

SCOUT: Why’d he wait sixteen years to tell you?

BELLA: Because my mom waited sixteen years to tell him. My mom let him think both her daughters were Charlie's until the day I visited her this August.

SCOUT: No … Why?

BELLA: She didn’t want Pete to come between me and my dad. She didn’t know, until I phoned her Friday, that I’ve known Charlie’s not my biological father since I was little, when I heard her remind him of that while they were arguing about his letting me get all covered in monkey grease.

SCOUT: Yeh, you told me on our first date that nobody knew that you knew. … But how’d your mom fool Pete? Charlie said he wasn't with your mom nine months before you were born. Didn't the guy who _was_ with her know that?

BELLA: Pete says he didn’t. My mom was single then – although Pete wasn’t. He says he was in a discreetly open marriage that he and his first wife had gotten into for the sake of a son whose arrival, when they were eighteen, was unplanned.

SCOUT: So you do have a half-brother!

BELLA: Yeh, years older than me, in the Air Force. … Anyhow, Pete, seventeen years ago, was spending most evenings at home being a father. He was in no position to know what my mom was doing – or to make any exclusive claim on her.

SCOUT: So why'd your mom tell Pete the truth in August?

BELLA: He’d just seen me running out of their house in tears. … And apparently after I'd read my mom the riot act, she decided I was strong enough to deal with the truth – if Pete wanted to tell me.

SCOUT: And Pete, when he learned that one of the girls living in the gas station was his own daughter, talked your mom into leasing it to Charlie instead of putting it up for auction?

BELLA: Kind of. Pete said he hadn't even known my mom owned the station. But that although the way my mom had gone about selling it wasn't the best way to have done that … 

SCOUT: That's an understatement.

BELLA: He said my mom had never expected Grace and me to lose our home. She assumed my dad would get a mortgage loan from his bank and either be the high bidder at the auction or, if he didn't want to risk being outbid, make my mom an offer before the auction.

SCOUT: Might have happened.

BELLA: Yeh, dad told me he'd figure something out. … I kinda panicked, running off to Carson.

SCOUT: Bella, we all got more than a gas station out of that trip to Carson.

BELLA: I know. … Anyhow, after my mom told Pete I’d just been there, all distraught about losing our home, they talked and she agreed to phone my dad and try to work something out. And she did.

SCOUT: Yeh, so fast that your dad was already ripping down the auction sign when we got back from Carson.

BELLA: But Pete told me things about that phone call that my dad hadn’t.

SCOUT: What?

BELLA: My mom offered my dad the choice of making lease payments to her or mortgage payments to a bank. They agreed that they'd start with the lease, and that my dad could buy it anytime.

SCOUT: But he has to do that before Grace turns eighteen? His option to buy expires then?

BELLA: Can you keep a secret from a girlfriend you're not bedding?

SCOUT: Until next summer’s cotillion.

BELLA (smiling): Nice. … That anything changes when Grace turns eighteen was news to Pete – and he phoned my mom, with me listening in, to make sure it was news to her, too. There's no such deadline, Scout.

SCOUT: Charlie made that up – to scare Grace into getting her act together?

BELLA: Apparently. And as I told Pete and my mom, it's worked. They laughed, said they were glad, and that they're happy to play the bad guys for as long as that seems useful.

SCOUT: Bella … they kind of are the bad guys. 

BELLA: Less bad than they seem, Scout. After all, my mom did let us use the gas station for free for years.

SCOUT: So why’d your mom decide to stop letting you use it for free last August?

BELLA: Pete's job had been shipped overseas, and his new job as an apprentice plumber pays a lot less. When he gets his journeyman license, he’ll make good money. But last summer, he and my mom were having trouble paying the rent, and couldn't find a cheaper place to live …

SCOUT: Than that run-down old place by the cemetery? Not surprising.

BELLA: So Donna wanted to buy a store in downtown Carson and open an espresso bar.

SCOUT: An espresso bar?

BELLA: Carson didn’t have one downtown – and the profit margins are huge.

SCOUT: Yeh … so I’ve read.

BELLA: Pete said the bar’s doing really well. He works there evenings and weekends – although Donna’s been covering for him a few Saturdays lately. But in early August, my mom had a short-fuse offer on a storefront. So she needed money in a hurry – either cash to buy the store, or extra income to pay a mortgage on it.

SCOUT: So Charlie's lease payments are covering your mom’s espresso bar mortgage payments?

BELLA: Since Halloween, Scout, our new pump globes are pretty much covering them. And they’re lovely.

SCOUT: They’re not the prettiest things at your gas station, beautiful.

BELLA: Will told me last night who installed them. Thank you.

SCOUT (pulling her close): You’re welcome. I trust you thanked Hamilton last night?

BELLA (nestling into him): I started – it could take a while.

SCOUT (nuzzling her head): It could. … I’m glad the globes are helping. … And I’m glad you can stop writing that letter in your head to your biological dad now.

BELLA: I wasn’t really writing it to him. I was writing it for myself. I told you that last summer. … And maybe I won’t stop. Maybe I’ll keep on writing for myself – with Will.

SCOUT: Writing for yourselves? Hard to make a living doing that.

BELLA: Will’s not going to be happy just writing for the mass market, for money. But maybe we could do both.

SCOUT: Write some shallow stuff for the mass market, and some deep stuff just for yourselves and your friends?

BELLA: Maybe we could do both at once, in the same book, or movie script, or whatever.

SCOUT: But mass market readers won’t want to slog through the deep stuff. And mass market viewers won’t want to watch it.

BELLA: They don’t even have to know it’s there. We just throw in a second level of meaning that nobody has to pay attention to, unless they want to. If it’s subtle, mass market readers or viewers might not even notice it.

SCOUT: You’ve seen that done?

BELLA: So have you - in children’s literature. Like in fairy tales. It’s what you preppies talked about Tuesday night. Before they were written down, fairy tales had to be remembered and recited by grown-ups. And to keep the grown-ups interested enough to remember them … ?

SCOUT: They had to have grown-up meaning that little kids couldn’t see.

BELLA: Right. And _Alice in Wonderland_ – it’s full of mathematical jokes that kids don’t get. And _Peter Pan_ – Captain Hook is Wendy's dad, in Neverland. They were originally played by the same actor. The pirate that Peter feeds to the crocodile is the part of Mr. Darling that has to die in order for him to become a better father back in London.

SCOUT: One who won’t make his daughter move out of the nursery before she’s ready.

BELLA: Did you ever see that when you were a kid?

SCOUT: I never saw it at all. Who does?

BELLA: Will. … And _The Wizard of Oz_ – it's a parody of traditional society, maybe of Europe in 1900, when Baum wrote it. The scarecrow's the peasants, the tin man’s the factory workers, the cowardly lion’s the useless nobility, the wizard who’s really a charlatan are kings who claim a bogus hereditary right to rule. And Dorothy's the wind of change - maybe democracy, maybe America, maybe just the need to grow.

SCOUT: But she doesn’t mean to change Oz. She just wants to go back to Kansas.

BELLA: People who change us often don't start out wanting to, do they? They just do what they must.

SCOUT Like Hamilton?

BELLA: Like Hamilton.

SCOUT: So what are the munchkins?

BELLA: The kids, obviously. They welcome Dorothy because they want a better future.

SCOUT: Will saw all that?

BELLA: Uh, no.

SCOUT: Who did?

BELLA: Well … last summer, Will was always humming that song you were just playing, from _The Wizard of Oz_ , about a place where dreams come true … and saying that Rawley’s like that … and I’d fallen kinda hard for a guy who was into politics and history …

SCOUT: You came up with that?

BELLA: With a little help. When I was in New York in August, there were all these DVD’s of different versions of _The Wizard of Oz_ lying around in Jacqueline’s rec room, ‘cause her mom had been hoping to play Dorothy in some new production of it …

SCOUT: Isn’t Jacqueline’s mom a little old for that?

BELLA: Jacqueline implied that’s why she hadn’t gotten the part. … But when I asked about the DVD’s, Jacqueline suggested we watch the 1939 movie version, “‘cause Hammy’s so into munchkins” …

SCOUT (wincing): Teasing him about his mom’s nickname for him.

BELLA: And then she suggested that she, Consuela and I sit next to Ham while we watch it and protect him like the scarecrow, tin man and cowardly lion protected Dorothy …

SCOUT: Ewww … She paid for that?

BELLA: Ham told Consuela to take the afternoon off … and all through the movie, he had Jacqueline wanting to get back to Kansas even more than Dorothy did.

SCOUT: But she didn’t until Dorothy did.

BELLA: That’s right. And Ham and I made sure she stayed in the twister a while before she came down.

SCOUT: You didn’t.

BELLA: She was so asking for it. And of course I got taken to Kansas too. … But somehow all through the movie I kept thinking of Will … and occasionally of you … so as I tried to make watching it more intellectually enriching for Jacqueline … that political interpretation just came into my head.

SCOUT: That was so twisted.

BELLA: Hamilton seemed to like it. So did Will, when he came back from St. Martin. So the first day of school, when I had to write the inevitable essay about how I’d spent my summer vacation … instead of writing about falling in love with by brother and meeting my real dad …

SCOUT: None of which would have been true.

BELLA: … I wrote about re-watching _The Wizard of Oz_ and seeing a few new things in it. … And about how a lot of writers of children's stories or dramas put adult meaning into their works.

SCOUT: Just for themselves - like you did last summer in your letter to your biological dad? … Even though there's no commercial payoff to it, 'cause the kids don't get it, and the grown-ups don't read it - or watch it?

BELLA: Yeh. At least, not right away. But sometimes, when the kids grow up, they re-read or re-watch them with their kids. And then they see things in them that they never saw when they were little … kinda like transcending time, being young and old at once.  

SCOUT: "And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers"?

BELLA: Something like that.

SCOUT: So … you like Pete?

BELLA: He seems like a decent guy.

SCOUT: But … can you really forgive your mom and him for what they did ten years ago?

BELLA: I already have, Scout.

SCOUT: Then I suppose Will will try to, too. … But I'm not sure that Grace and I, or Charlie, will be able to.

BELLA: Let me help you. … (Disengaging:) Will and I had lunch at his house, with his parents.

SCOUT: Today? … Will didn't work the lunch shift at the diner?

BELLA: Not for long. Charlie phoned your manager, who came in to work it himself, so that Will and I could tell Will's parents about us – and my scholarship.

SCOUT: Sweet. But what’s that got to do with forgiving your mom and Pete?

BELLA: After lunch, Will walked back here to Rawley, but I stayed to help Will’s mom clean up. She I and both wanted to talk. I told her about phoning my mom, and about Pete. And then she walked me to her beauty salon, and pulled this out of a locked box in a cupboard. (She pulls a stamped, opened letter-size envelope out of an inside jacket pocket, hands it to SCOUT.)

SCOUT (taking the envelope): To Will's mom, at her beauty salon … from your mom, at an address in Carson … postmarked ten years ago. … An explanation?

BELLA: An invitation - to stop supporting an abusive husband and marry the guy my mom had seen that Susan was still in love with, and who was still in love with Susan, seven years after he'd stopped waiting for her in order to marry a pregnant former girlfriend and help her raise her baby.

SCOUT: Charlie? … Susan’s the girl he was waiting for?

BELLA: You’ve heard about that?

SCOUT: A little. …Why'd Susan keep him waiting?

BELLA: My dad wanted kids - soon. Susan wanted to wait until they had more money to do that with.

SCOUT: And Donna left him to get out of Susan's way?

BELLA: Partly. … When Charlie married my mom, Susan immediately let a total jerk marry her and get her pregnant. And if she wanted punishment for having made Charlie wait too long, she couldn't have made a better choice than Brian Krudski.

SCOUT: I've heard.

BELLA: But Pete said she didn’t leave Charlie until Pete was free – until Pete’s wife had found a single guy she really loved, and that their son liked. He said he and my mom helped Pete’s his ex-wife and her new husband raise Pete’s son, and that all four of them are still friends.

SCOUT: So at least Pete didn’t totally abandon his son, the way your mom abandoned you and Grace.

BELLA: Scout – in that letter, my mom tells Susan she’d be a better mom to Grace and me that my mom could ever be. I suspect she meant it – she and Pete haven’t had any kids in the ten years they’ve been together. And although Grace and I loved her … she may have been right.

SCOUT: Yeh, Will told me last summer that your mom was … “not very mom-like.” But that’s still no excuse for totally abandoning her daughters.

BELLA: Scout, if she’d stayed in my life after Pete moved in with her, Pete and Charlie would have talked. They'd have figured out that Pete was my biological dad. And with both my biological parents being together, and Charlie being single …

SCOUT: You might have had to leave Charlie and Grace.

BELLA (nodding): But if Susan had left Will’s dad to be with Charlie … then maybe Charlie and Pete would both have felt better about it. Maybe Pete and my mom could have been for Grace and me what they were for Pete’s son – part-time back-up parents. That letter suggests that’s what my mom hoped for.

SCOUT: But Will’s mom never left Will’s dad – and Charlie never went for her … so your mom was locked out.

BELLA: Yeh. She told me in August that it was complicated.

SCOUT: It was. But your mom’s mistake was simple. She just didn’t get that some people, like Will’s mom and your dad, take commitment seriously. And the consequences have been devastating.

BELLA: Scout …

SCOUT: But she didn’t expect them. So if you and Grace can forgive her, I can.

BELLA: Thank you.

SCOUT: Has Will read this letter, or at least heard what’s in it?

BELLA:No.

SCOUT: Has Grace? Or Charlie?

BELLA: No.

SCOUT (offering the envelope back to BELLA): Then I’ll read it after they have. Or with Grace, if you, Charlie and Will and want me to. Is that what you want my help with?

BELLA (declining to take it): That’s part of it, Scout. I’d like you to read it with Grace, soon. But Mrs. Krudski and I don’t want Will or Charlie to read it, or hear what’s in it, for a while – maybe half a year.

SCOUT: Why?

BELLA: Because two doctors have told Will’s dad he’ll be dead in six months. That’s why I part of what I stayed with Susan to talk about when Will left.

SCOUT: His liver?

BELLA (nodding): The more Will’s succeeded at becoming everything his dad could never be, the more his dad’s been drinking. He couldn’t live with his son’s growth.

SCOUT: Does Will know?

BELLA: Will’s mom told him Thanksgiving night. And don’t feel bad – Will wasn’t going to tell me, either. He only did that this morning, because my dad made him – after Will told my dad.

SCOUT: Why did Will tell him?

BELLA: Because Will knows, just like Grace and I do, that our dad and his mom have never stopped being in love – although they’ve never done anything about it. My dad went over to the Krudskis’ right away to offer his support.

SCOUT: So Susan doesn’t want Charlie to know what’s in this letter until he’s free to do what your mom wanted him to do ten year ago?

BELLA: Obviously.

SCOUT: That I can support – but it could take longer than six months. Charlie and Susan both seem like decent-interval-of-mourning types.

BELLA: They are. But at lunch, while Will’s mom was in the kitchen, Will’s dad told us he’d already asked my dad, this morning, not to wait too long – and said he wants everyone to know that’s what he wants.

SCOUT: Will’s dad has turned into a decent guy?

BELLA: Mortality focuses the mind powerfully. And Will told his parents the story this morning.

SCOUT: Then why can’t Will know what’s in this letter?

BELLA: Will’s dad is trying to make it right with Susan and Will before he dies. He’s doing that well, and Will’s responding well. Susan and I don’t want this messing that up.

SCOUT: So we won’t tell Will about Pete, or about your being in touch with your mom, or about this letter, until Will’s dad is buried?

BELLA: Please.

SCOUT: I’ll try. But I won’t hide from Will that I know his dad is dying – and changing.

BELLA: I wouldn’t ask you to. When the time seems right, give Will a chance to tell you himself. If he doesn’t, then tell him I told you. I can deal with it.

SCOUT: Thanks. … So when shall we tell Grace about all this?

BELLA: Wednesday after school? Mrs. Krudski can leave the beauty salon early.

SCOUT: No problem. Where?

BELLA: The old churchyard. There’s a gazebo.

SCOUT: Serious setting for a serious subject?

BELLA: We need to make Grace understand why we have to hide this from Charlie and Will, and why she and I can’t let our mom back into our lives for a few more months.

SCOUT: You and Grace will wait for Charlie to reconcile with your mom – with Susan’s help, after Will’s dad is dead?

BELLA: It’ll be way better that way.

SCOUT: It will. But someone needs to explain to Donna and Pete why it’ll have to wait. Would you like me to ask my parents to do that – if I can bring them into this? They’d be glad to learn that a woman they both liked and trusted didn’t mean to abandon her daughters.

BELLA: You can, Scout. Thank you.

SCOUT: I’m sure they’ll be happy to do it. I plan to take Grace to Greenwich to meet my family on Saturday – and to tell them the parts of the story they haven’t heard yet. But we can leave Sunday morning, to free up the afternoon for your mom and Pete.

BELLA: And Scout – would you please ask your parents to tell Pete and my mom the story … about Ham and Jacqueline … and all of us?

SCOUT: I doubt I could stop them – or my little brother, or my sisters.

BELLA: Thanks.

SCOUT: No problem. … I gather you’d like me to keep this letter?

BELLA: Until it’s time for my dad and Will to read it. Someplace where neither of them could find it. I’ve heard Dean Fleming has a safe where students can keep valuables.

SCOUT: He does. I’ll ask his secretary to keep it there for me after Grace has read it. Until then … on our way to the Flemings’, we can put it into a combination-lock suitcase in my walk-in.

BELLA: Where you keep your booze?

SCOUT (putting the letter into an inside jacket pocket): Off-season clothing. The booze is stashed under a loose floorboard.

BELLA: I just don’t want Finn finding this letter during a room inspection.

SCOUT: Inspections of our room will remain perfunctory unless Will or I give Finn reason to make them thorough. … Anything else I can do to help?

BELLA: One last thing, if you would.

SCOUT: Tell me.

BELLA: I’m really grateful to your dad for offering to get a paternity test. But I’d like proof of who my biological dad is – not just who he isn’t. So would you please ask your dad to consider paying for a paternity test for me and Pete, instead of for me and him?

SCOUT: Pete’s willing?

BELLA: He offered yesterday. He implied that he’d pay for it, but he’s not flush for cash.

SCOUT: Then I’ll pay for Pete’s. But we’ll still get my dad’s.

BELLA: Isn’t that … redundant?

SCOUT: No. Negative results of paternity tests are one hundred percent certain, if the mother participates. But positive results aren’t, although they come close.

BELLA: Really?

SCOUT: So it says on Mass General’s one-paragraph webpage about its paternity tests. Check it out.

BELLA: I will.

SCOUT: So it's not just that, for you and Charlie, we want to be as sure as we can that Pete is your dad. It's also that my dad needs the best proof he can get that he’s not your dad, if we’re going to stop hiding this mess. And we all do want to do that, don’t we?

BELLA: For sure.

SCOUT: I want to give my grand-dad certain proof that my dad didn’t cheat on my mom. And knowing who your dad is makes that  _feel_ way more certain, emotionally.

BELLA (smiling): Yeh, it does. 

SCOUT: So I’ll arrange payment for Pete’s test this week, and ask my dad to tell Pete next Sunday that he can make an appointment for any day before ours.

BELLA: Thanks again.

SCOUT: My pleasure. Now maybe you could help me with something?

BELLA: I’ll try. What?

SCOUT: Something kinda awkward … if Will’s mom is going to be my girlfriend’s step-mom.

BELLA: What’s awkward about that?

SCOUT: Well … Normally my dad’s totally discreet. But Wednesday, when I told him all us Rawley kids had been invited to Thanksgiving dinner by town families, he said the same thing had happened one Thanksgiving when he was at Rawley. And he, uh, mentioned that he was sent to Susan’s family – not knowing she’s Will’s mom now. And he kind of implied that …

BELLA: They were together for a while afterwards?

SCOUT: Yeh. It seemed to be a fond memory.

BELLA: For Susan, too. She told me about it today, after I told her about you and Grace.

SCOUT: I’m glad. I just wish he could have been more than that. … The only time Will has ever looked envious about anything I have was when he first met my dad.

BELLA: Scout, Will will have my dad. And he'll have him thanks in part to your dad.

SCOUT: You've lost me.

BELLA: You heard what my dad said about yours Thanksgiving night? About his being a politician, and a good one - so good that he could go out with a slew of townie girls and come out it smelling like a rose, with the girls, their families, and their next boyfriends all liking him? How do you think he did that?

SCOUT: Yeh … I've wondered about that.

BELLA: The way Susan tells it, he'd find a single girl who was shy or hurt, build her confidence or help her heal, find out what and who she liked, help her find a guy - while making clear he wasn't available for a long-term relationship - then move on and do it again. The first time he did that, during his first year here, he just stumbled into it - met a girl who needed help, but who he knew he wasn't right for.

SCOUT: But kept doing it - deliberately?

BELLA (nodding): He got a reputation for doing it, and for doing it well.

SCOUT: Bella, are you saying …

BELLA: Yes. Early in the spring of his last year here, at a party, your dad told my dad, then a freshman, that the freshman girl your dad had been with since Thanksgiving liked my dad. My dad was willing, your dad helped it happen … then spent his last months at Rawley with a sophomore girl my dad told him about - a girl who was seriously bummed that a junior she really liked and had let get away had just gotten a junior girl pregnant.

SCOUT: My dad set Charlie up with Susan … then, at Charlie's suggestion, tried to help Donna over losing Pete?

BELLA: Yes. This is going to be anything but awkward for our parents, Scout.

SCOUT: It's going to be romantic. … And here I thought my dad went through Rawley sowing his wild oats.

BELLA: Oh, he got lots of sex - really affectionate sex. With whatever girl he was nurturing and didn't want to fall in love with him, he kept it limited. But after a while, couples he'd already gotten together started asking him to take a little time between his Pygmalion projects - so that they could pull him in, with some girl who wanted to be part of helping them thank him.

SCOUT: You're kidding.

BELLA: Susan, who dated him during his last year here, was blown away by how many people wanted to do that - and by his passing all that up to be with her for a few months.

SCOUT: He played for the long term.

BELLA: At the start, he just enjoyed helping people. But I'm sure he enjoyed the thank-you sex, too. And maybe he wanted a whole town to fall in love with him - as it did. Beginning to see why my dad was so pissed when he thought your dad had let us all down?

SCOUT: Yeh. … And I think Will kinda told me. At the end of parents' weekend last summer, when I was bummed out about my dad's reaction to my telling him I'd fallen for a girl he'd fathered with Donna, I told Will that I'd thought growing up would feel better than this. Will smiled and said, "I'm pretty sure it will." At the time, I though Will was just being, well … old. It's weird how grown-up he seems sometimes.

BELLA: Does he?

SCOUT: Yeh, even Ryder's noticed it. … But maybe Will was trying to let me know something about my dad's reputation in town, too - I mean, in general terms. If Will's mom had told him about my dad and her, I'd have heard about it.

BELLA: Actually, Scout, Will’s mom did kinda tell him about that last summer – right after he first met your dad.

SCOUT: Will’s known since summer session parents’ weekend?

BELLA: Will visited his mom at the beauty parlor to tell her about your dad’s taking you and him to Fanny’s and letting you guys drive his Mercedes around a parking lot. When Will wrapped up by saying that your dad "really is the coolest guy," his mom just said, “Is he?” – in a tone of voice that said she already knew that way better than Will did. Then she changed the subject to giving Will a haircut.

SCOUT: Oh god …

BELLA: Scout, it’s a small town. We’re used to it.

SCOUT: I guess you must be. … But why didn’t Will tell me?

BELLA: Maybe because you’re not used to it?

SCOUT: I should get used to it?

BELLA: That would be nice.

SCOUT: Alright, so I’m a useless preppy. … And I've totally underestimated my dad.

BELLA: No more than I've underestimated my mom. Besides, your dad kinda exceeds expectations.

SCOUT: Yeh … and I get to learn how much from the girl I thought was his daughter.

BELLA: Well, that's the point, see - I'm not. (She points to her mouth.)

(SCOUT smiles, then kisses her, tenderly, lips-only but erotic.)

SCOUT (breaking off): Are you and I safe with each other now?

BELLA: As long as Will's not with us. Now our biggest problem is …

SCOUT: That we're both in love with the same guy.

BELLA: Yep. When Will's with us, we're gonna need a chaperone.

SCOUT: I have just the girl in mind. … So when will you start at Rawley?

BELLA: After Christmas, though I won’t move on campus till next school year. … I’ll room with Jacqueline.

SCOUT: With Jacqueline.

BELLA: Does that surprise you?

SCOUT (lolling his head back, looking up at the sky): Whose life is this, anyhow?

BELLA: Scout? … Are you alright?

SCOUT (snapping out of it, turning to BELLA): I don’t know. Just trying to make sense of it all. Because now I’m jealous. But maybe I’m supposed to be.

BELLA: I don’t understand.

SCOUT: Neither do I. … What are they, Pratt and Fleming? Flesh and blood, yes. I grew up with him, they’ve cried on my shoulder, and I love them.

BELLA: We all do, Scout.

SCOUT: But what are they to us now, together? Fairy tale characters come alive? High priest and priestess of some Dionysian mystery? And on the first night our god and goddess of love reveal themselves publicly, they put you and Will together, and spend the night with you.

BELLA: Scout, you know we’ve all been looking forward to being together. And we all want you with us, with a girl you love, and next year you will be.

SCOUT: Yes, but I won’t be rooming with one of them. And neither will Grace.

BELLA: God, you are jealous.

SCOUT: I’ll have lots of company. Every kid in this school will be jealous of you. Better get used to it.

BELLA: Scout, back up. First of all, I won’t be Jacqueline’s only roommate. We’re hoping to get a quad with Anne and Lena – whom, I’m told, you helped get together with Ryder last night.

SCOUT: I did.

BELLA: Well done. So how changed is Ryder?

SCOUT: Hugely. It was a pleasure. That Lena and he and Anne and Mark will be with sharing a suite with you and Will and Jacqueline and Ham does not make me feel less left out.

BELLA: Then why don’t you and Will try to get a quad at the boys’ school with Mark and Ham next year?

SCOUT: Bella, Ham lives off-campus.

BELLA: He won’t next year. Ham’s dad can’t have Jacqueline sleeping at his house on weeknights. That would look like favoring his son. And he can't have his son sneaking out of his house into the girls' dorm. So Ham and Mark will room together, and except on free weekends, Ham and Jacqueline will go through the same horsecrap as other couples. And Mark and Ham asked Will this morning if he and you’d share a quad with them next year.

SCOUT: Oh …

BELLA: And although Lena, Anne and I may room together next summer, Jackie won’t move in with us then.

SCOUT: Of course not. She can’t come back here till next fall.

BELLA: No, she’ll be here next summer …

SCOUT: A term before her year of separation is over? That won’t wash. I can’t believe Ham’s dad has agreed to that. I know mine won’t.

BELLA: Jacqueline can’t take courses next summer, Scout. But she can cox junior division boys’ crew.

SCOUT: Oh … Yeh, she can. And that’d be great. … But where will she live next summer?

BELLA: Where I live now, Scout. With Grace. And she’ll work with Grace, too. At the gas station.

(SCOUT stands, walks to the porch rail, looking away from BELLA, toward the lake.)

SCOUT: I’m the one who doesn’t belong here. … I don’t have … so much as a mustard seed.

BELLA (standing, putting her arms around SCOUT): None of us deserves to be here, Scout. None of us deserves life. It’s all …

SCOUT: Grace.

BELLA (smiling): Yeh.

SCOUT: Grace gave me the invitations you all wrote yesterday at the girls’ school. And a couple more that Lena gave her.

BELLA: Grace told me. I'm glad they worked.

SCOUT: For Will's - thank you.

BELLA: My pleasure.

SCOUT: And last night, between rounds of love-making, you, Jacqueline, Will and Ham all conspired to help Grace and me by having Jacqueline live in your room and work your job next summer?

BELLA: We just sandwiched you in with the triple-crème brie on pieces of Mrs. Fleming’s home-baked bread, sprinkled you on Mrs. Haggerty’s scrumptious apple noodle pudding, and drank you with the most delicious dry white wine, while we listened to a David Gray album. You tasted wonderful.

SCOUT: And Jacqueline Pratt, who knows nothing about cars, and could just rent a room in town next summer, and spend whatever time she can’t spend with Hamilton either reading or motorcycling or swimming in the lake, decided to spend it pumping gas.

BELLA: It’s almost as if you were there … But you were, you just didn’t know it. 

SCOUT (disengaging, finding his coffee): It’s perfect, of course. … You know, Grace barged into the diner yesterday, after she saw Jake in girl clothes, with Hamilton, and demanded the story behind that. So I told her. And …

BELLA: Suddenly, you both knew? … Tell me about it. I’ll never forget hearing that story on our trip to Carson. That’s why I didn’t ask my mom about my biological dad that day. It didn’t matter anymore, because, suddenly, I knew I was meant for Will. 

SCOUT: I know.

BELLA: So what do you think of my sister’s new look?

SCOUT: Nothing says “I’m willing to wait” quite so clearly as drag, does it?

BELLA: At least you won’t have to worry about competition.

SCOUT: If I can keep Fleming away from her.

BELLA: Funny, whatever-it-is-you-may-become-to-me.

SCOUT: Life’s so weird. For months I wanted not to be your brother. Now I’m signing up to try out for the part … through Grace. But it’s only weird because it’s so perfect, so … too good to be true. … Bella, when I’m here, at Rawley, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m in a dream.

BELLA: Afraid you’ll wake up?

SCOUT: No. ‘Cause I don’t think it’s my dream. It’s better than anything I could dream.

BELLA: Whose, then?

SCOUT: I don’t know. But Providence seems to work faster and clearer here than elsewhere.

BELLA: Maybe ‘cause it gets more help?

SCOUT: Maybe. … Bella, how do we tell a dream from reality?

BELLA: We share reality. Dreams are private.

SCOUT: What if there’s one that’s not? Like the dream of loving one another better than we do. Can that dream be private? Isn’t sharing it a part of it? And if it is shared …

BELLA: Scout, whatever it is, don’t question it. Just live it. Just love.

SCOUT: But how to do that, that’s the question. It seems there’s always more to learn. … Bella, you and I were in an emotional fog last summer. I couldn’t cut through that and think straight. But it turns out that Hamilton could, and did. Wait’ll you hear.

BELLA: I heard it in August. Jacqueline and I talk, Scout.

SCOUT (crestfallen): Oh …

BELLA: But aren’t you glad you heard it yesterday, the way you did – from Lena, with Grace?

SCOUT: Yeh, I am … And today, of course, that's the buzz of the school.

BELLA: Is that going well?

SCOUT: Even better than Hamilton had hoped. You’ll see it play out when we say good-bye to Jacqueline. I think most of the school will be there. Guess who seems to be orchestrating it.

BELLA: Ryder?

SCOUT: How’d you know?

BELLA: Just a guess. Maybe I’m beginning to understand how this dream works.

SCOUT: How’s that?

BELLA: Whatever seems most impossibly good is most likely to happen. The hard part is imagining it.

SCOUT (grinning): Yeh. … Come on, let’s go.

(SCOUT takes their empty coffee cups, tosses them into the boathouse trash can, pockets _Little Women_ , pulls out his harmonica, and, walking backward in front of BELLA, resumes playing “[Over the Rainbow](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I).”)

 

*       *       * 


	18. Scene 15 – Where is fancy bred?

INT - THE FLEMINGS’ HOUSE, LIBRARY. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (DAY - AFTERNOON).

 

(A low fire burns in the hearth; sunlight melts snow from trees outside the windows. A recording of Elizabethan [consort music](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2yqxneZJoU) plays softly in the CD player. KATE and the DEAN sit in the rocking chairs facing the coffee table in front of the hearth, the DEAN on the right. FINN and JAKE sit on the sofa to their right, FINN nearer the hearth. MONICA and HAMILTON sit on the sofa to their left, MONICA nearer the hearth. They are all drinking coffee.)

JAKE: Mom, I should have known it was too easy to talk you into letting me come here for Thanksgiving. The Flemings had already asked you, obviously.

MONICA: They had. Kate visited me in New York two weeks ago yesterday. And I met Steven and her in Carson last weekend. But that’s not the only reason I agreed.

JAKE: What else?

MONICA: Until the storm hit, I hadn’t planned to drive you and Anne and your sled back to Grottlesex in a rented cargo van this afternoon. I’d planned to drive you and Anne and Hamilton to New York in my Jaguar. In return for my letting you come here for Thanksgiving, Hamilton’s parents agreed to let him spend this coming week with us. … Hamilton, I was looking forward to that. I’m sorry it can’t happen.

HAMILTON: So am I, Mrs. Pratt. I’d planned to spend next week with a friend in Short Hills … but I’m sure we could have worked something out.

DEAN (rolling his eyes at HAMILTON): No doubt.

MONICA: So spend Christmas break with us instead, please.

HAMILTON: Wow! Thanks, I … (He pauses, looks at JAKE.)

JAKE (smiling): Come, Hamilton. Just bring your books. And remember that I have a transfer application to fill out.

HAMILTON: Mom, Dad, may I? I’ll come back here for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, of course.

KATE: Not unless you want a very lonely Christmas. Your father and I’ve already accepted Monica’s invitation to spend a few days around the holiday with her, before we head to Greenwich for New Year’s – where we and the Calhouns hope you, Jacqueline and Monica will join us.

HAMILTON (after a pause): Mrs. Pratt, Mom, Dad … thank you.

JAKE: Yes. … But Mom – Hamilton and I'll spend the first weekend of Christmas break in Boston. We’ve got a project there.

(The DEAN rolls his eyes. KATE shoots him an amused smile.)

HAMILTON: And sometime toward the end of the break, we need to spend a couple days in Short Hills.

MONICA: No problem. Just be in town the evening of Friday, January fifth, please.

JAKE: What’s happening on the fifth?

MONICA: _Merchant of Venice_ opens at the Broadhurst.

JAKE: Wait – that’s the same play, and the same date … Mom, you gave the snow sculpture prizes? And they’re opening night seats?

MONICA: The lead actress gets some tickets, you know. To the show and the cast party. Enough to give a few to her daughter.

DEAN: And to her daughter’s boyfriends’ parents.

JAKE: You’ll play Portia?

MONICA: Through mid-April, if we last the scheduled run.

JAKE: But Mom … you’ve always said you’d never play that role. Or Rosalind. Or Viola. Or ...

MONICA: Julia, or Imogen - I know. Instead, I’ve excelled at playing the epitome of femininity – Lady Macbeth.

          “But the full sum of me  
           Is sum of something, which, to term in gross,  
           Is an unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractised;  
           Happy in this, she is not yet so old  
           But she may learn.”

JAKE: What made you change your mind? And when? If the play opens in January, you must have taken the part months ago. Why didn’t you tell me?

MONICA: I took the part in September. After I met a Shakespeare scholar with some intriguing insights into how those cross-dressing roles might be played. He’s changed my thinking in other ways, too. You may see a bit of him in town during the holidays.

JAKE: Gee, Mom, that sounds … sort of serious.

MONICA: Well, it’s not every day that I meet a guy who cares about what I care most about.

JAKE: Mom, there are thousands of guys who live for theater, or for Shakespeare, and you’re surrounded by them.

MONICA: Oh, I’m not talking about theater. Or Shakespeare.

JAKE: What, then?

MONICA: You, Jacqueline. What I care most about is you.

JAKE (after a pause): Oh my god. ... Finn? You ratted me out to my mom?

FINN: As you said yesterday, for a straight girl to pretend to be a boy at an all-boys’ boarding school is seriously messed up. In fact, it’s self-destructive – like what’s celebrated by that “Primal Scream” _Vanishing Point_ poster you hung in your dorm room, only slower and more painful. So yes, when you didn’t come back this fall – when you switched schools for the sixth time – I sought out your mother.

HAMILTON: Didn’t you say you weren’t sure of what you saw – I mean, in the showers?

FINN: I wasn’t. So, as I told you on Thursday, I asked Will Krudski. He didn’t give me an honest answer. But he didn’t lie to me, either. He just wouldn’t talk about it. When I finally asked him flat-out whether Jake is really a boy, he asked me back: “Why are you asking me for personal information about another student that you could easily get from that student’s mother?”

HAMILTON: Evasive, but technically the correct answer. Clever.

FINN: Yes. And when I said I didn’t want to bother Jake’s mom if it wasn’t necessary, Will replied: “She’s a single mother and a Shakespearean actress. What makes you think she’d find a single, Harvard-educated Shakespeare buff who’s about her age, and who cares about her kid, a bother?”

HAMILTON: Will said _that_?

FINN: That and, when I prevaricated, a few choice words about residual townie lack of confidence. … And about … (Glancing quickly at the DEAN:) … something personal. Finally, he said: “Jake needs you to do this. Jake’s mom needs you to do this. And you need to do this.” Then he left.

JAKE: Oh god …

FINN: So I phoned Monica’s agent, booked five minutes of her time, persuaded Dr. Hotchkiss to sub for me, and took a train to Manhattan. I told Monica I’d come to ask why her son, Jake, whom I’d had the pleasure of teaching, hadn’t come back to Rawley this term. If she hadn’t reacted to that, I would have just asked whether we’d lost a good student by not doing well something that we might do better.

MONICA: Of course, I did react … for a lot more than five minutes. But Finn calmed me down, phoned Grottlesex, and confirmed that you were enrolled there as a girl. Then he asked me not to do anything else until he’d had a chance to try to find out what had happened last summer, and why.

FINN: And, wickedly, I asked Monica if she’d like to hear, first, what I already knew.

MONICA: So I cleared my schedule for the rest of the day, and Finn walked me over to Central Park and took me rowing on the lake. In twenty years of living in the City, I’d never done that.

FINN: What are out-of-town guests are for?

MONICA (laughing): Precisely. … First Finn told me how cleverly you’d done it, Jacqueline – somehow getting a single room, and signing up for the only athletics position that didn’t require you to change and shower in a locker room. And how hard it must have been despite that. Then Finn asked me whether the acting talent needed for that performance could be inherited. I decided right then that I liked him.

FINN: Until I made you switch places with me and row.

MONICA: That was so humiliating.

JAKE (muttering): Tell me about it …

FINN (to MONICA): You learned.

MONICA: Slowly. … (To JAKE:) While I tried to row us back to the boathouse, Finn talked about what he’d seen of you and Hamilton - in his class and in crew. He pointed out that Hamilton apparently had been willing to let everyone suspect he was gay in order to be close to you. And we both agreed that you seemed a lot happier at the end of the summer than at the start.

FINN (to JAKE): And over an early dinner at the boathouse restaurant – your mom’s treat – she and I pieced together what you and Hamilton must have done at parent’s weekend, in order for you to make your mom think you were enrolled as a girl, while rowing in the boys’ regatta.

MONICA: We both ended up laughing – but also impressed by your competence in organizing that, Hamilton.

FINN (to HAMILTON): Including your telling me that Jake had a rash, and shouldn’t be subjected to the traditional cox toss if we won. Not true, I presume?

HAMILTON: Another eon in purgatory.

FINN: At least. … That evening, after catching a train back here, I did what I needed to do to get your story out of Will Krudski. I pointed out that I could tell the Dean, or confront you, or that Monica could confront Jacqueline, if he didn’t tell it to me. I forced Will to betray your confidence, Jacqueline. I’m sorry I had to do that.

JAKE: That’s not your fault, Finn. It’s mine.

HAMILTON: And Jacqueline and I will find ways to make it up to Will. But I kinda think he saw it coming.

JAKE: Yeh. Probably from the minute we first told him that you’d caught us in the shower.

FINN: Not unlikely. … The following Saturday, I trained back to New York, and told Monica what Will had told me. What you’d told him on your trip to Carson.

JAKE (to MONICA): So that explains all the letters, and visits, and phone calls this term … and why you’ve taken a gig in New York?

MONICA: Is it a bad explanation? For years I’ve felt you didn’t want me in your life, Jacqueline. I hope, in time, to become someone you do want in your life. Meanwhile, I intend to be in it whether you want me in it or not. I should have been all along. Finn helped me understand that – that what we need can be quite different from what we want.

JAKE: Mom, you’re right, I haven’t wanted you in my life. Last summer, I didn’t understand that. I didn’t understand that I’d pushed you away. I thought I just felt unloved. And I told myself I was cross-dressing just to get your attention. But Hamilton’s helped me understand that it goes way deeper than that.

HAMILTON: Jake …

JAKE: Hamilton, I need to do this. … Mom, I think I didn’t want you in my life because you’d given up on being loved for more than your body. And your feeling unlovable made me feel unlovable. I think that’s why I cross-dressed. Partly so I could blame that feeling on something other than my personality. And partly in the desperate hope that some guy might love me anyhow – for myself, despite my body.

MONICA: Jacqueline, I know. I was messed up, and I messed you up because of it. I’m sorry. I’m glad you found help. And because you did, I’ve found help, too. Someone who believes, with all the fervor of a convert, that there is more to love than sex. Someone who’s shown me that I needn’t hide my personality or my strengths for fear of seeming unlovably masculine – for fear of being Lady Macbeth.

JAKE: Finn? A guy who’s first lesson to incoming first-years is that passion comes from the groin rather than from the head or from the heart?

FINN: Jacqueline, I’m still breathing, so I’m still learning, OK? I’ve learned, from Hamilton, that I was wrong, that passion can come from … someplace else. Someplace I’m trying to find. Someplace that Shakespeare may have been trying to find:

          “Tell me, where is fancy bred?  
           Or in the heart or in the head?  
           How begot, how nourished?”

JAKE: Yeh, I caught the allusion on the lake last June.

HAMILTON: I didn't.

JAKE: "I'm da man."

(HAMILTON winces.)

JAKE: You didn't grow up in it. … But Finn, I hope that what breeds your fancy for my mom is more than concern for her messed-up daughter.

FINN: Jacqueline, you needn’t worry. I’ve come to fancy your mother more, even as her daughter has stopped being messed up.

MONICA: Jacqueline, you’re right, when Finn and I first met, we’d both given up on love. But you and Hamilton proved, last summer, that we don’t have to. When Finn told me how you’d done that, we both shattered into little pieces. We fell in love helping each other try to put ourselves back together again – differently.

KATE: Hamilton, Jacqueline … that goes for Steven and me, too. It hurts, but it’s a joy.

JAKE (to MONICA): So … “Another night is over, another day is dawning”?

MONICA (laughing): Yes, although in this production, the Heaviside Layer seems to have been lowered down onto the stage. … (Suddenly serious:) And I, like you, Jacqueline, have been too long “familiar with candle, with book, and with bell.”

JAKE: Then, Mom, as someone said to me last summer: “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up. You seem different: you’re happy.” … And Finn, as someone else said to me recently: “Welcome to our family.” (She hugs FINN and nestles onto his lap.)

HAMILTON: Finn, Monica - best wishes. For Jacqueline and me, it’s great to have you with us.

FINN: Thank you. … I’m sorry I misled you both Thursday evening. I didn’t lie to you, but I deliberately gave you the impression that not until this month, when Will and I told Ham’s parents, did I find out for sure what I’d seen the day summer session ended, or learn the story behind that. I did that so that Monica and I could both tell you the truth together. Forgive me?

JAKE (purring): Of course.

HAMILTON: Mrs. Pratt, your kindness to Jacqueline this term has meant a lot to her – and to me. Thank you – and you, too, Finn – for everything. Including the sled. It’s fantastic. You two should try it.

MONICA (smiling at FINN): Maybe next winter. … And Hamilton, you and Jacqueline have already thanked Finn and me better than any words could, just by doing what you’ve done.

FINN: Including by enrolling at Grottlesex as a girl this term, Jacqueline. What I said Thursday evening, that you’ve been missed, is absolutely true – we all want you back here. But if you’d come back to the boys’ school this fall, I’d have had to be part of making you leave. That would have been very unpleasant for all of us, and maybe for Will and Scout and Scout’s dad, too.

JAKE: I know, Finn. … Dean Fleming, Mrs. Fleming, I hope you weren’t too angry with Finn for waiting two months to tell you.

KATE: Jacqueline, we had no cause to be angry with Finn. He played this by the book.

JAKE: He did?

DEAN: Strictly. Need to know is the applicable professional criterion for divulging sensitive personal information about a former student. Your mother needed to know in September, because you were clearly at risk. But I didn’t have an official need to know, since you were no longer enrolled here.

KATE: And much as Steven and I might have liked to know, we didn’t have a personal need to know, because Hamilton wasn’t at risk. Finn would have been wrong to tell us earlier than he did.

JAKE: But wasn’t the school at risk of a scandal? Wasn’t Hamilton at risk of being booted for not ratting me out? And if Finn would have been wrong to tell you in September, why was he right to tell you two weeks ago?

DEAN: Good questions, Jacqueline. Care to answer them, Hamilton?

HAMILTON (to JAKE): The risk of scandal, or of a disciplinary action, doesn’t create a need to know. The only relevant risks are risks to the welfare of the students. For a school, nothing else is supposed to matter. If it’s doing what’s best for its students, it should be able to withstand scandals. And its disciplinary decisions are supposed to be based on what’s best for its students. … Right so far, Dad?

DEAN: Quite. Continue.

HAMILTON: My parents first needed to know when they considered forbidding me to see you unless I told them I was gay. To cut a kid off from someone he loves for no good reason harms him, and to make him lie to his parents about his sexual preference harms him. So Finn was right to tell my parents then, and would have been wrong to tell them earlier.

DEAN: Exactly. 

JAKE: Got it. Thanks. … So Finn, did you actually think all that through?

FINN: Jacqueline, when you’ve worked in a school for a few years - or grown up in one - these things are obvious. … But Hamilton, there is something that’s not at all obvious to me.

HAMILTON: What, Finn?

FINN: If I hadn’t stopped your parents from demanding that you admit to being gay as the price of your continuing to see Jake, would have told them you were gay? Or would you have told them the truth? Or would you have tried to persuade them that you weren’t gay without telling them that Jake’s a girl? Do you know?

HAMILTON (surprised): Don't you?

FINN: If I did, I wouldn't be asking.

HAMILTON: You didn't take tea with Dr. Hotchkiss Friday?

FINN: Much as I wanted to, I couldn't. I needed to do some shopping.

HAMILTON: Oh. … Well - I’d have told the truth. In fact, I’d been waiting to be asked for the truth. And there’s one part of it that none of you knows, that Jacqueline and I need to tell you today, before her mom takes her back to Grottlesex.

(The adults exchange glances of trepidation.)

HAMILTON (to JAKE): Shall we?

JAKE (disengaging from FINN): Can’t put it off any longer, can we?

HAMILTON: ‘Fraid not. You wanna start? (He removes from his inside blazer pocket two sealed, stamped, postmarked envelopes, and one unsealed envelope, sets them on the table in front of him.)

JAKE: Dr. Fleming, I told you right here, on Thanksgiving night, that nobody asked me to leave Rawley. That’s true. But it’s not the whole truth. I’m at Grottlesex now because, soon after I left Rawley, somebody asked me not to come back here this year.

DEAN: Who?

JAKE: Hamilton - when he visited me in New York.

KATE (to HAMILTON): But you do want Jacqueline to be here with you.

HAMILTON: Of course I do, Mom. And I did then. I’ve wanted us to be together, as close together as two people can be, since … well, since I still thought Jacqueline was a boy. I’ve wanted it more than almost anything. But ever since I learned that she’s a girl, there’s been one thing I’ve wanted even more.

MONICA: What, Hamilton?

HAMILTON: I’ve wanted Jacqueline to be herself. Yes, I’ve wanted her here. But safely here, not at constant risk of expulsion. Here with us, not just with me, not half-isolated from everyone but me. Here with a future, not racking up credits on a transcript that says she’s a guy. Here with me because I’m the guy she wants – not because her choices are needlessly limited. If I’d let Jacqueline stay here with no security, no real friends, no future, and no freedom, just to be with me, sooner or later she’d have hated me. And I’d have hated myself.

JAKE: Mom, when I first came here, pretending to be a boy, I’d never done that before, and I planned to do it just for a few weeks of summer term. The whole idea was to shock you – that you’d yank me out of here. But by the time you showed up for parent’s weekend …

MONICA: You and Hamilton were already in love, and you wanted to stay. I know, Finn’s told me.

JAKE: But Hamilton wouldn’t be let me keep on pretending to be a boy past the end of summer term. When he came to Manhattan, the week after summer term ended, he spent the first couple of days just … well, making sure I knew he loved me …

DEAN: Excuse me, Jacqueline. Perhaps Hamilton might like to do a bit of that again now. … (Standing:) And I’d like to do a bit of it with Kate, if you’d be so kind as to vacate that sofa.

(The DEAN helps KATE rise. JAKE kisses FINN's cheek, moves to the other sofa, snuggles into HAMILTON.)

DEAN: Finn, what are you waiting for?

(FINN, grinning, moves to the other sofa, next to MONICA. The DEAN sits down on the empty sofa with KATE, puts his arm around her, gives her a light kiss.)

DEAN: That’s better. … Please continue, Jacqueline.

JAKE: But then Hamilton made the case for my leaving Rawley. He said it was the only way I could stop pretending to be a boy. And I knew I had to do that - for myself, for Hamilton, for this school, for you and Kate … (Faltering:) But to know I could be myself … without losing the guy who makes me feel that what I am is worth being … that he as was willing to give up having me nearby as he had been to give up being straight … It was …

MONICA (coyly): “Like Bogie in Casablanca?”

HAMILTON (kissing JAKE’s temple): Only if Bogart planned to snatch Bergman back as soon as Hitler was done for.

FINN: Interesting idea for a sequel.

JAKE (amused, recovering): It was Hamilton. … (She takes a sip of coffee, resumes:) But deciding to leave Rawley was scary. Several things made it easier. First, having been caught by you, Finn. After that  … I knew I couldn't put off dealing with them problem.

HAMILTON: We’re not quite ready yet to say thank you for that, Finn. But it helped us do what we had to do anyhow. If we had to do it over again …

JAKE: I’d keep my bra on. Another thing that made it easier was that Hamilton had already done my school-searching for me. He’d found three schools, including Grottlesex, that were close enough to Rawley that he could visit on weekends, and that I might be able to get into on short notice. He’d done that during summer term, without ever telling me.

HAMILTON: It would have ruined the mood.

JAKE: It would have devastated me. … And he stayed with me, in New York, while I filled out the applications and wrote the essays, then drove me out to the interviews. And when I’d been accepted by two schools, and had chosen one … (Drowning in Hamilton’s eyes:) … only then did he finally …

FINN (softly): We get it, Jacqueline. Fast forward.

JAKE: Sorry. … But what helped most to make it easier was that Hamilton had a plan. That’s what we want to tell you about. A plan to allow me to come back to Rawley as a girl.

DEAN: Jacqueline, I already have a plan to do that.

JAKE: I know, Dr. Fleming. You’ve offered to risk your work here by lying for Hamilton and me. We appreciate that more than we can say. But Hamilton has a plan to bring me back here next fall that doesn’t require anyone to lie. Please let him show it to you.

DEAN: Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that Hamilton has thought more clearly than I have. He did that in a scholarship matter only three days ago.

(JAKE’s jaw drops. She looks at HAMILTON, clasps him more tightly, turns her face to the fire to hide the tears welling in her eyes.)

HAMILTON (uncomfortable, but undeterred): Dad, I knew that if Jacqueline was forced to leave Rawley for a year, that might be punishment enough for her to be considered for re-admission. So I did, during August break, what you'd have done if you'd caught her - and I documented my actions.

DEAN: What actions, son?

HAMILTON: I got her written confession and her written agreement not to come back for a year - as punishment.

MONICA: But Hamilton, your father has the authority to do that. You don’t. So how does that help?

HAMILTON: On the contrary, Ms. Pratt, Rawley’s honor code gives me no less authority to do that than my father has. Every student has it. In fact, every student has not only the right but the duty to report lying by another student about a matter of official concern to the school.

FINN: But you didn’t report it, did you?

HAMILTON: You can’t report a former student who’s not currently enrolled. All you can do is file a report contingent on that student’s re-enrollment. And that’s what I did. … Dad, in late August, I mailed four envelopes with identical contents from New York. I mailed three to myself care of Jacqueline - two are here, unopened.

DEAN: And the fourth envelope?

HAMILTON: I sent it, by registered mail, inside a larger envelope, to the Honor Committee’s secretary, with a covering letter instructing the Committee to open it only in the event either of Jake Pratt’s re-enrollment at Rawley Boys’ - ever - or of Jacqueline Pratt’s enrollment at Rawley Girls’ before next autumn.

DEAN: And that other envelope on the table, the unsealed one with no postmark?

HAMILTON: It contains the registered mail receipt, a copy of the letter to the Honor Committee’s secretary, and two documents identical to the two inside each of the sealed, postmarked envelopes.

JAKE: They’re two affidavits notarized in Manhattan in late August, Dean Fleming.

HAMILTON: One is executed by me, stating that I’d discovered that Jake Pratt misrepresented her gender – and hacked the room assignments to get a single, and kept a motorbike at school – while attending Rawley Boys’, and that I’ve informed her that I’m contacting the Honor Committee to prevent her from either re-enrolling at Rawley Boys’, or from enrolling at Rawley Girls’ before next autumn.

JAKE: The other is executed by me, stating that what Hamilton wrote in the first one is true, and that I, accordingly, am leaving Rawley Boys' and will not try to enroll at Rawley Girls’ before next fall.

HAMILTON: They’re incontrovertible documentation of involuntary separation from the school, Dad. Proof of punishment.

JAKE: Dean Fleming, we’d like you to keep one of those sealed envelopes. And to read, at your convenience, what’s in the unsealed one.

(HAMILTON hands the DEAN one sealed envelope and the unsealed envelope. The DEAN briefly scans the documents in the latter.)

DEAN: That’s all in good order … including Maggie’s signature on the registered mail receipt. So my own secretary has more or less known since she got your cover letter?

HAMILTON: The Honor Committee’s secretary has known, Dad. You know Mrs. Fitzpatrick can’t tell you what she learns in that capacity.

DEAN (rolling his eyes): Her reaction?

HAMILTON (shrugging): The first day of fall term, she called me up to your office, and asked me where Jake was going to school and whether he’d made any changes to his wardrobe. When I said he’d had a complete makeover, she said, “Good,” and asked whether I’d be visiting Jake that weekend. That Friday, she called me up again, gave me a tin of her home-made molasses cookies, and said “For Jacqueline.”

DEAN (to MONICA): Now you know who really runs this school. 

MONICA: Sounds like she does it well.

DEAN: Very well.… Hamilton, what you’ve done may be enough to enable me to let Jacqueline transfer back here next fall, if most students, faculty, and parents seem not to object. But you haven’t been formally punished. And now that you’ve gone to the Honor Committee …

HAMILTON: You can’t protect me from it, I know.

DEAN: Son, you’ve manipulated the honor system to make it possible for me, with enough support, to construe Jacqueline's departure as an involuntary punishment. But the fact that she's still your girlfriend strongly suggests you didn't coerce her into leaving.

HAMILTON: Obviously. But I'm hoping most people will be willing to ignore that.

DEAN: Even if most people are, not everyone will be. And any student who doesn’t like what you’ve done or how you've done it can use the honor system against you. So I’m not sure your plan is better than mine. Yours puts you at greater risk, although it puts me at less.  

HAMILTON: My plan is better, Dad. Unlike you, I don’t have a family and a school depending on me. I won’t have anything like that for years.

KATE: Hamilton, I agree, and I thank you and Jacqueline for your thoughtfulness.

DEAN: Who, other than Mrs. Fitzpatrick, knows that you're using the honor system this way? 

HAMILTON: By now, the whole school. It's part of what the _Rag_ girls heard from me Wednesday, and told the students last night. And of what what Dr. Hotchkiss heard from Anne and Mark Thursday, and told the faculty on Friday. That's why I was surprised by Finn's question.

DEAN: But nobody has mentioned it to me.

KATE: Or to me.

HAMILTON: They were asked not to discuss any of the story with either of you until Jacqueline leaves today - to make sure you heard all of it from Jacqueline and me first. 

DEAN: So you've deliberately left me no choice. We have to run with your plan.

HAMILTON: That's right.

JAKE: And it is right, Dean Fleming. I can live with making Hamilton go to Edmund for a year. I couldn't live with costing him his home, and this school its dean.

DEAN (after a pause): Alright. … (To KATE:) I suppose being the parents of an Edmund student for a year could be fun.

KATE: It could. … (She kisses the DEAN affectionately. Breaking off:) Especially an Edmund student with a Rawley girlfriend, next fall. All through the snow-sculpture judging this morning, I was showered with compliments on our son, and comments about how good it will be to have Jacqueline back here.

DEAN: So was I, at and after chapel this morning - which was unusually well-attended. … (To HAMILTON:) And Tom Phillips, who, uh … kindly stopped by after dinner yesterday evening, with his friend Matt, told us what the faculty had just done at the dining hall.

JAKE: Hamilton and I were really touched.

DEAN: You handled it brilliantly, Jacqueline. … (Looking at MONICA:) A Broadway-quality performance.

KATE: And Steven and I've already received three phone calls in the same vein from parents who'd already heard the story from their kids, in person - Tom 's parents, the McGrails, and the Cromptons.  

HAMILTON: Anne's parents?

DEAN: Yes - with apologies for being party to your conspiracy. … So if they, the students, and the faculty had all heard what you've just told us …

HAMILTON: They had, Dad.

DEAN: Then I'd say that what you and Jacqueline have done seems likely to make her re-admission possible.

KATE: So would I. … But Hamilton, how would you have played this out, if your father and I hadn't invited Jacqueline here for Thanksgiving? You said Wednesday evening that Jake was coming here today - and you obviously had decided to tell us.  Why now? 

HAMILTON: I was waiting for what Finn prevented from happening - for you to ask me whether I was gay. I thought you and Dad would take the truth better if I waited until you insisted on having it.  

DEAN: Because the more worried we became about whether you were gay, the more our pleasure at learning that you're straight might soften our displeasure about the rest? 

HAMILTON: That did cross my mind. But when you and Mom seemed to stop wanting the truth, I gave up on waiting for you to demand it. Then it turned out you already knew, and told Jacqueline and me before we could tell you. … That surprised me. I didn’t expect that you’d ask Finn for advice, Mom. 

DEAN (quickly changing the subject): Well, nobody’s perfect, son. Despite that, your handling of this has been no less impressive intellectually than emotionally. And that’s an eye-opener. Because we tend to assume that love, if it’s real, dulls one’s wits. That it seems instead to sharpen yours is … unsettling.

FINN: Seriously unsettling. To see love driving gears and wheels that only baser emotions are supposed to engage is, well … scary.

JAKE: Why? It makes me feel safe.

FINN: Maybe because Hamilton’s shown us potential that it’s easier to pretend we don’t have, and our traditional assumptions let us do that.

JAKE: What assumptions?

FINN: Look, Jake … Sorry, Jac…

JAKE: It’s cool, Finn. I don’t need gender-identity reinforcement. People who first knew me as Jake will always think of me as Jake. Even Hamilton. He tries so hard not to call me that. … (Again looking into HAMILTON’s eyes, melting:) It’s sweet. But when he gets emotional, or when we we’re …

FINN: Jacqueline …

JAKE: Sorry. Anyhow, call me “Jake” when you like. But again, what assumptions?

FINN: I think most people make the same mistake I was still making at the start of last summer. They assume that passion comes from the groin. But in fact a lot it comes from compassion. And the thinking part of love is the compassionate part. But if we don’t see the compassionate part, if all we see is the passion, then we can’t understand that love need not be dumb.

JAKE: But why don’t people see that? Why didn’t you?

FINN: Because we doubt that compassion can be strong enough to rule passion, to use it … much less give birth to it.

JAKE: And that’s the unused potential?

FINN: Yes. If we saw through the passion to the compassion that it masks and expresses, then maybe we could love better than we do. And it’s easier to believe that we can’t.

(HAMILTON looks at FINN with newfound respect.)

DEAN: But I can’t recall any philosopher, or playwright or novelist who says that. The closest approach to it I can think of is Dostoyevsky’s _Idiot_. It points out that passsionless compassion is ineffective because people reject mere pity. But Dostoyevsky suggests that passionless, ineffective compassion is the best we can do, because, true to St. Paul, he thinks passion destroys compassion.

FINN: That true love can be cunning is no new insight – it’s the core of Homer’s _Odyssey_. But we seem to have forgotten it for a long time. And I can’t think of any poem, or play, or novel that both affirms that love needn’t be dumb and tries to explain why we now tend to think it must be.

MONICA: But, as you’ve pointed out to me, Shakespeare comes close.

FINN (smiling at MONICA): Yes. Erotic love is shown as both cunning and compassionate in two of his characters, both cross-dressing women – Rosalind and Portia. Shakespeare seems to have been suggesting that our fixation on physical appearance can blind us to the true nature of love:

          “You that choose not by the view,  
           Chance as fair and choose as true!”

KATE: I look forward to seeing that acted out at the Broadhurst.

HAMILTON: So do I.

MONICA: Hamilton, no drama I’ve ever seen beats the one you’ve staged for Jacqueline these past five months. I’d like to know how you came up with the script – including your scheme to make it possible for Jacqueline to transfer back here. That must have taken some thinking.

HAMILTON: It did. Almost too much thinking.

MONICA: So it took the whole second half of summer term, and into August break?

JAKE: No, Mom. Hamilton did it all in one night – the night of the cotillion.

MONICA (to HAMILTON): In one night? … How?

HAMILTON: I had to. I loved … (to JAKE): Yeh, you don’t need it anymore, do you, beautiful? … (To MONICA:) I loved Jake. And without some plan to help her heal emotionally, stop behaving self-destructively, and try to come back here as a girl, so we could be together – I couldn’t have found the courage to kiss her.

MONICA: Hamilton, are you saying that you planned all this, planned to take Jacqueline out of Rawley Boys’ this fall and bring her back to Rawley Girls’ next fall, before you first kissed her?

HAMILTON: Before I first kissed her knowing that she was a girl, yes. I had to. I knew she’d leave at dawn if I hadn’t gone to her. When I finally did, she was writing me a goodbye note.

(The DEAN, KATE, FINN and MONICA exchange amazed but concerned glances.)

HAMILTON: But it turns out Jake couldn't have left alone. A friend of ours had locked her bike. If I hadn't gone to her, he'd have taken her away from here that morning - and he'd have loved her at least as well as I have. But I didn't know any of that, and it's a story we'd like to tell you when he's with us.

MONICA (to JAKE): Your cup runneth over.

JAKE: Mom, you have no idea. So many people here have helped me in so many ways - ways I'm still finding out about, like Will Krudski's sending Finn to you. And the best part is - they don't just do it for me, or for Hamilton and me. They all help one another, all the time. It's beautiful.

MONICA: "A whole school full of kids trying to love one another impossibly well"?

JAKE: Yes. It's like they're all competing to see how loving they can be. And when one of them raises the bar, like Hamilton did last summer … it just inspires the others to try to jump even higher.

HAMILTON: And some of them already have - including Jacqueline. But that, too, is another story, for another day, with other company.

MONICA (after a pause): Steven, Kate … thank you.

DEAN: Thank the kids. 

MONICA: I'll try. … So Hamilton - you knew, the night of the cotillion, how all this would turn out … that you'd be able to bring Jacqueline back here.

HAMILTON: Knew? No. All I knew was that our relationship at Rawley was doomed in the short run – that Jake would have to leave after summer session even if she wasn’t caught during it – and that only by accepting that could I love her well and have a chance of a future with her. A chance, not a certainty. I’ve been scared all the time. Countless things could have gone wrong.

JAKE: Yeh, Grottlesex isn’t Mars. Some kid here might have talked with some kid there.

HAMILTON: Or while Jake was still here, she could have been caught in some embarrassingly public way that would have left Dad no choice but to expel her permanently. Or she might not have wanted to come back here and deal with the flak she’ll always get from some kids for having cross-dressed. Or we might have been unable to do some of the emotional work we’ve had to do to stay together.

JAKE: But so far, the biggest surprises have almost all been incredibly good.

HAMILTON: They have. We were caught in the right way – privately. And at the right time – soon enough to help Jake see that she needed to leave Rawley for fall term, but late enough to avoid making her leave during summer session, when she still needed to be here.

JAKE: And at the right time to let me learn that my friends here, like Scout and Will, would still like me despite knowing I’d cross-dressed – but without putting them at risk of expulsion.

HAMILTON: And we were caught by the right person – by someone who’s helped you make Jacqueline realize that you do love her, Mrs. Pratt. And who knew just how and when to tell my parents. So well that they offered to help without my even asking them. And Mom, Dad, I can’t tell you how much that means to me.

JAKE (to the DEAN and KATE): And to me. To feel not just accepted, but wanted, here, with Hamilton, by you … it’s heaven.

HAMILTON: And Jacqueline has healed and grown faster, and loved me better, than I could have imagined. And our friends, the few who’ve known, here and at Grottlesex, have been incredibly supportive. It’s all worked out way better than I planned, or even dared to hope.

DEAN: Good plans get help, Hamilton. Plans that don’t aren’t much good.

MONICA (laughing): True – ask any director. … (To HAMILTON:) But how the same boy, on the same night, could have both the passion to sacrifice his sexual orientation, and the calculating coldness to do all that scheming – especially after Jacqueline shocked you the way she did – I cannot understand.

HAMILTON: But Finn just explained it …

MONICA: Yes, and intellectually, I get it – the passion and the calculation both came from the same compassion, the same desire to help Jacqueline. But emotionally, I find it … incomprehensible.

HAMILTON: Because you’ve never had to do it. I hope you never will. But if you ever have to, Monica, you’ll be able to. When we think as hard as we can about how to love as well as we can … we get help.

MONICA (cocking an eyebrow): Prayer is answered?

HAMILTON: If you’d rather say it that way.

JAKE: Mom, you’re not alone. Until Hamilton came to New York in August, I’d never imagined that he had come to me, after the cotillion, having thought it all through. It blew me away, too.

MONICA: But you understand it now?

JAKE: Some. But Hamilton still keeps surprising me. So do a lot of people, including you. … Maybe we never know what love is, ‘cause we can always love better. All I know, Mom, is that Hamilton’s the person I want to try to do that with. Just help us, please.

MONICA: That a mother can do. And over Christmas break, I hope to start. But now, I'm sorry to say, you and I should find Anne and get on the road to Grottlesex.

JAKE: Yeh, it's time. … (Standing:) I'll go pack my things.

FINN (standing): Hamilton, shall we load the sled into the van?

HAMILTON (rising): Sure. Excuse us, please.

KATE: The rest of us will be out shortly.

 

*       *       * 


	19. Scene 16 - The quality of mercy

EXT - FLEMINGS’ HOUSE. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (DAY - AFTERNOON).

 

(Melting snow glistens in the sunshine. The white cargo van is in the driveway. A snow shovel protrudes from a snowbank where the driveway meets the street. WILL and the GROUNDSKEEPER lean against the van, talking and looking at a crowd of about two hundred students across the street, clustered chiefly in two driveways and the sidewalk between them. The crowd includes SCOUT and BELLA, BRANDON and JENNIFER, SEAN and LIZ, STEWART and BROOKE, TOM and NANCY, MATT and DOROTHY, JAN, ALICE, WENDY, SUSAN, LENA and KYLE Stratton. RYDER, left cheek still bruised, stands in front, not far from LENA.

A zipped jacket or light coat, no snowboots, perhaps a loose scarf but no hat, is the standard attire this relatively warm afternoon. LENA, wearing her half-length cashmere coat and knee-high boots, reads a textbook. The GROUNDSKEEPER wears his Ignatius-Reilly-like coat, scarf and hunting cap.

MARK and ANNE sit in two adjacent Adirondack chairs at end of the front porch farther from the driveway, petting the three golden retrievers and talking.)

ANNE: So that’s why you got Dr. Hotchkiss to talk about irony in classical love stories at the start of Thanksgiving dinner – before you told him I’m Penelope’s roommate. I’m shocked, shocked that you would pry into that, boy.

MARK (shrugging): So round up the usual suspects.

ANNE: But you do seem to have found the passage of _The Odyssey_ you were looking for. Clever.

MARK: Not really. Ironic love’s what Ham used to heal Jackie. And he implied that what Dr. Hotchkiss recited was his inspiration.

ANNE: You really think Dr. Hotchkiss’ reciting that passage was enough to inspire that irony?

MARK: Definitely. Dr. Hotchkiss taught Ham his Homer. He was just prompting Ham to recall one of Homer’s lessons – that to love well can require deception, even of the person you love.

ANNE: But do you buy Dr. Hotchkiss’ interpretation? That dreams from the gate of ivory are the beautiful dreams that we rightly want to come true? That Penelope’s saying that they don’t come true? And that Homer intends for us to reject her despair? That’s not how it’s usually understood, is it?

MARK: Because it’s usually read out of context. And as Dr. Hotchkiss said, the first word, “stranger,” is the key. It’s wrong. The guy Penelope’s talking to isn’t a stranger. And because he isn’t, the whole passage, Penelope’s fear that her dream won’t come true, that only unpleasant dreams come true, is wrong, too. Odysseus is already making his wife’s fondest dream come true by deceiving everyone, including her.

ANNE: But Penelope doesn’t dream of the deception part.

MARK: Right. What makes her dream come true is something better than she could dream of.

ANNE: So how did Dr. Hotchkiss know that Ham would need to deceive the girl he loved?

MARK: Hamilton had told him that he couldn’t see a solution. That he’d just found out how messed up his girl was – which implies she’d deceived him. That she was going to have to leave Rawley – which implies she was deceiving Ham’s dad. And that she was hurting herself – which implies she was deceiving herself, that she wasn’t ready for honesty.

ANNE: But we can’t ever let Hamilton know you figured it out.

MARK: Maybe after Dr. Hotchkiss has passed. Till then, even Jackie can't know.

ANNE: Because even she will never be as close to Ham as his godfather is? Does that seem right, Mark?

MARK: Anne – Ham couldn’t love Jackie so well if he didn’t love something else more. Like I couldn’t be totally in love with you if I didn’t love something else even more. And Dr. Hotchkiss is Ham’s link to that, like …

ANNE: Wait … what did you say?

MARK: Dr. Hotchkiss is Ham’s link to that. 

ANNE: No, before that.

MARK (slowly, a grin creeping over his face): Um … the part about Ham and Jackie …

ANNE: Noooo …

MARK: Oh … the part about … I love you?

ANNE: Yeh, the good part, you shamelessly cheesy mimic.

MARK: Well, I do.

ANNE: And you figured that out when, boy?

MARK: This morning, when Jacqueline got mad at you and Hamilton. If she’d stayed angry, if she’d broken with you, or with him, or both … I’d have done whatever it took to stay with you, Anne. I’d have transferred to Grottlesex to do that.

ANNE: I know. That’s why I told Jacqueline this morning how Ham got me and her together. To make her angry, so you’d understand how you feel.

MARK (after a pause): Clever, but dangerous.

ANNE: Not really. She loves him. And I love you, Mark.

MARK: And when did you know that, girl?

ANNE: Last night. After we’d helped Brandon and Jen, and Will and Bella, and Sean and Liz, and Scout and Grace … not just Ham and Jackie. ‘Cause I couldn’t love you so much if I didn’t love something else – something we’re all part of – more.

MARK (leaning in): Right.

ANNE (also leaning in): Right.

(As MARK and ANNE kiss, HAMILTON and FINN come out the front door. HAMILTON has ditched his sweater-vest and blazer for a zip-front half-collared sweater with broad black-and-white rugby stripes, worn mostly zipped up, no scarf. His camera hangs from a strap over his shoulder. Headed for the driveway, HAMILTON and FINN don’t notice MARK and ANNE.)

FINN: So your indiscretion in the showers, the day summer session ended, wasn’t quite like Orpheus looking back at Eurydice. It wasn’t uncontrollable passion. … (Stopping at the top of the porch steps:) You just no longer cared whether you were caught nor not.

(The golden retrievers approach HAMILTON and FINN, who stoop down to pet them.)

HAMILTON: Passion is never uncontrollable, Finn. But compassion is inexorable. My Eurydice was going to have to spend a year back in the underworld no matter what happened. Once I’d stepped into the sunlight of the end of summer session, all that mattered was that she know I love her, so that she could spend that year in the Elysian Fields, not back in hell. I, even more than Orpheus, had no choice.

FINN: So it’s still Orpheus – but a different kind of Orpheus?

HAMILTON: And a different kind of Pluto, Finn. Have you thought about the other half of why Jake and I got caught – about why you were in the showers?

FINN: To wash off a coating of water-soaked feathers.

HAMILTON: Those feathers were on you because the guys here love you, and wanted to show you that before they left for August break. If you weren’t a guy who gives kids second chances, you wouldn’t have been there to catch us.

FINN (after a pause): I’ve been given some second chances myself. … Like one day last summer, when I was loving someone badly, and looked out the window of my classroom, and saw … you. 

… I’ve been studying you for five months, Hamilton.

HAMILTON: Sounds dull. Shakespeare's better.

FINN: His plays, unlike his sonnets, were for the public - and censored. He never staged a guy falling in love with what he thinks is another guy.

HAMILTON (coyly): You're sure? 

FINN (half-laughing): With you, I'm not sure of anything. … But to watch a straight boy fall in love to play emotional saviour to a troubled gay boy … That was a “there but for the grace of God go I” experience. … Strangely edifying - especially while you were still fighting it … and clearly losing.

HAMILTON: You saw it … even before the cotillion?

FINN: In the shell, even before it became obvious in lit class. … (Disengaging from the dogs, standing:) And with Monica, whose problems are sort of a mirror image of Jacqueline’s … I’ve been cribbing your lessons.

HAMILTON (also standing): Crib away, Finn. They’re not mine, I just use them.

MARK (clearing his throat, standing, helping ANNE to rise with him): Finn, Hamilton, excuse me … 

HAMILTON (turning, with FINN): Oh … Hi Mark, Anne.

MARK: Finn, this is Anne Crompton. Anne rooms with Jacqueline at Grottlesex. Anne, Finn’s our lit teacher, crew coach, housemaster …

ANNE: And an all-round great guy. I know. Pleased to meet you, Finn. Really pleased. I’ve looked forward to this for a long time.

FINN: The pleasure’s mine, Miss Crompton. I’ve looked forward to meeting you for a long time, too.

ANNE (exchanging looks of surprise with MARK): You have?

HAMILTON: Finn and Jake’s mom are together. Since September. She’s inside.

MARK (first amazed, then delighted): Will told us she’s here … but not that.

(MARK and ANNE look into each other’s eyes, pull each other close, then turn back to FINN.)

MARK: Finn, best wishes. We’re really happy for you. And for Monica. And Jacqueline.

(ANNE, eyes tearing, nods her agreement, then nestles into MARK and unloads on his shoulder.)

HAMILTON (to FINN): Uh … Anne and Mark are together, too.

FINN (rolling his eyes at HAMILTON): I know.

HAMILTON: You do?

MARK (holding ANNE and nuzzling her head): Ham – Anne and I met Monica at Grottlesex the weekend Jackie got us together.

HAMILTON (mental wheels spinning): Oh … of course … (To FINN:) And you told my parents, like, two weeks ago?

FINN: Right after Will and I told them about you and Jake, I asked Will to leave, then told them about Monica and me. And I thought they needed to know that the guy you’ve obviously become close to this term is dating your girlfriend’s closest friend. It implied that you weren’t, well …

HAMILTON: Cheating on Jacqueline, or toying with Mark, or both.

FINN: Yes.

HAMILTON (to MARK): So the parentals have known about the four of us for two weeks.

MARK (grinning): Much is explained.

HAMILTON: Yeh.

ANNE (still sniffling, but recovering): Finn, what the four of us have is beautiful. And it’s mostly Jackie’s doing. We need to tell her mom and you about it. Soon.

HAMILTON: Yeh, we do. We told my parents yesterday.

FINN: And they told Monica and me a little about it yesterday evening. We were here for dinner.

HAMILTON: Oh … So that’s why my parents packed Jacqueline and me off to a guest cottage last night? They really did want some privacy?

FINN: It’ll be a few years yet till you’re as sly as your father.

HAMILTON: So I’m learning. … How much did they tell you?

FINN: That Anne hopes to transfer here with Jacqueline next year. That she won’t transfer without Jacqueline. That if you and Jacqueline have to be apart, Anne and Mark will be apart with you. In short, that you’re all frighteningly serious. But they didn’t tell us how that happened. They said we should hear that from you.

MARK: They’re right. When?

FINN (smiling): Monica’s spending tonight and tomorrow night in Grottlesex. She’d planned to be there just with Jacqueline and Anne. But she suggested last night that I drive you and Hamilton up there tomorrow evening. We could all have dinner together, and I’d bring you back here Tuesday morning in time for first period classes. You guys could get some driving practice, if you’d like.

HAMILTON (after trading smiles with MARK): We’d like that very much.

ANNE (kissing FINN on the cheek): Thanks, Finn.

FINN (blushing slightly): I’m told the story will be thanks enough. And now, if you and Mark will excuse us, Hamilton and I have a van to load.

MARK: That’s already been done.

HAMILTON (looking at the driveway): Great.

MARK: Finn, as my crew coach once said when I asked him to cox for me, “Go be with your girl.”

FINN: Thanks, Mark. … Hamilton?

HAMILTON: I’ll wait out here.

(FINN goes back inside.)

ANNE (taking HAMILTON’s hand, pulling him close): He’ll be so good for Jackie … for us.

MARK: And for Monica?

HAMILTON (wrapping an arm around ANNE): Just what she needed. … (Eyeing the crowd): Jake’s fans?

MARK: Yep. Full house. Standing room only.

HAMILTON: I’ve created a monster.

MARK: You said you wanted drama. But inside, I gather, your performance was upstaged?

HAMILTON: Wonderfully. Will’s doing. Turns out he pointed Finn at Monica.

ANNE: Why am I not surprised? Will’s such a sweetheart.

HAMILTON: I need to start to try to thank him. Come help, please?

MARK: Wouldn’t miss it.

(HAMILTON, MARK and ANNE descend from the porch to the driveway and walk toward WILL and the GROUNDSKEEPER, who talk heatedly in the driveway.)

WILL: But the bus can’t be just a metaphor for redemption. Being hit by it leaves the guy impotent for, like, six episodes.

GROUNDSKEEPER: No, no. Tony’s impotence is a metaphor, too. For being a lousy lover, so affectionless that Maxxie wilts and Michelle never gets off with him. His being hit by the bus isn’t the cause of that, it’s the start of its cure. … ‘Afternoon Hamilton.

HAMILTON: ‘Afternoon, Haggerty. Inflicting your teen drama addiction on poor Krudski?

WILL: A shared interest, Ham. And only for few minutes. Before that we were discussing groundskeeping.

HAMILTON: Didn’t know you were into that.

GROUNDSKEEPER: Not much here at Rawley that Mr. Krudski isn’t into, Hamilton.

HAMILTON: I’m told the sled’s already in the van.

GROUNDSKEEPER (opening the van door to reveal the sled and, next to it, the snowmobiler’s backpack and a cookie tin painted with a Currier-and-Ives winter scene): Mr. Johnson, Mr. Krudski, Mr. Ryder and I made light work of it.

HAMILTON: Thanks. What’s in the tin?

GROUNDSKEEPER: A little something from Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

HAMILTON (smiling): Ah. … Hold that open, please? … (He quickly takes a photograph of the snowmobile framed in the door of the white van.) Thanks. … Brian, if I might, I’d like a word with Will.

GROUNDSKEEPER (closing the door): Certainly. I’ll see if Mr. Ryder could use some help with that crowd.

HAMILTON: Thanks again. You know the blonde girl standing with Scout Calhoun?

GROUNDSKEEPER: Miss Banks? Of course. School vehicles don’t fill their own gas tanks.

HAMILTON: Would you please ask her and Scout to join us?

GROUNDSKEEPER: Glad to. (He walks from the driveway into the street.)

(HAMILTON hugs WILL, pulling in MARK and ANNE. In the background, the GROUNDSKEEPER talks briefly with SCOUT and BELLA.)

HAMILTON (locking foreheads with WILL): You’ve exceeded expectations … again.

WILL: By ratting your girlfriend out to her mom even before I ratted you out to your dad?

HAMILTON: Yeh. It’s all better than I could have dreamed.

BELLA (approaching with SCOUT): Hi guys. What’s up?

HAMILTON: Jake and I need your help, and Scout’s.

SCOUT: Sure. With what?

HAMILTON: Thanking Will. … (Pulling BELLA in between himself and WILL, and SCOUT in between WILL and ANNE:) He’s set Finn up with Jake’s mom. They’re inside, and they’re in love.

BELLA: I know. And I’m really happy for Jacqueline. (She hugs HAMILTON, kisses him.)

SCOUT (wrapping an arm around WILL): _Bien fait, coloc. Très bien fait_.

BELLA (to HAMILTON, disengaging, nestling into WILL): But Will doesn’t need more thanks, Ham.

WILL (kissing BELLA’s head): Exactly. Bella and I’ve been given everything we want, and more – the perfect life with the perfect people. All we need is to love you. So let us.

HAMILTON (tightening the group hug): Always, guy. … Jake is so happy. Monica’s feeling that she could only be loved for her body was what Jake was rebelling against. Jake couldn’t have fully healed until her mom was healed, and I couldn’t have healed her mom. You’ve done that.

WILL: We’ve done that. Finn, chiefly, with help from all of us.

HAMILTON: But how you ever got close enough to Finn to get him to do this, I still don’t understand.

WILL: And you never will. It’s private.

HAMILTON (nonplussed): OK. … So you’ve known, since September, that Finn and Monica were together?

WILL: Known, no. Hoped and increasingly suspected, yes. I didn’t know till last night.

HAMILTON: Last night?

WILL: Finn told me yesterday morning that he’d like me to meet someone in the evening. That seemed likely to be Monica, and it seemed likely that she was the guest in the other guest cottage. After dinner, when Bella and I got to the guest cottage, I phoned Finn’s cell and, sure enough, he asked if I could come to the other guest cottage. So Bella and I walked over there.

HAMILTON: You two put off making love for the first time … to meet Monica?

WILL: We kinda like Finn and Jacqueline, ya know? So yeh, I wanted us to meet Finn’s lover, Jacqueline’s mom. … (Nuzzling BELLA:) Besides, I thought that Bella’s seeing Finn and Monica together, and hearing from them that I had something to do with that, might make our first time even better.

MARK: You devil.

BELLA (caressing WILL’s chest): Kinda made it better with Ham and Jacqueline later, too.

ANNE: Oh, that must have been wicked. Bedding Ham and Jackie, knowing her mom and Finn were together, just a few hundred yards away, and that they’d find out the next day.

HAMILTON: It _was_ wicked. … (To BELLA:) That explains a lot. Jake and I'd expected you and Will to be … well, a little bashful. Instead, it was like you were telling us, all night, that there’s nothing we can’t do.

WILL: Well, there’s not, with help. Look at what we’ve done. We’ve shown everyone that true love is possible. By doing that, we’ve made it possible for Jacqueline to come back here, and for Anne to come with her. We’ve gotten pump girl here to take a scholarship and me. We’ve gotten Scout to go for a girl who really needs him – not to mention a boy who does …

HAMILTON: Don’t Michèle and Denise deserve some credit for that?

SCOUT (exchanging a soft smile with WILL): Less than Jacqueline and you.

WILL: And we’ve gotten Sean together with Liz, and Brandon with Jen. We’ve helped Jan and Alice stay with Fred and Steve. We’ve pulled Lena out of her shell and given Ryder some hope. We’ve gotten the girls’ school a headmistress. And we’re getting Jake a step-dad and a little brother or sister. How long do you think it’ll be before you have one, too, lover boy?

HAMILTON (shocked): Excuse me?

WILL: You said it yourself: your parents are back in love. And Lena hit the nail on the head yesterday when she said your dad’s nearly adopting Ryder because he likes his only son so much that he wants another. You think he’ll stop there?

HAMILTON: I don’t know. But what’s with the bit about Jake getting a little brother or sister?

WILL: Oh crap … They didn’t tell you?

HAMILTON: Nooooo …

WILL: Ham, I’m so sorry. Really. You should have heard it from them. You won’t tell Jake?

HAMILTON: Obviously.

WILL: They must be trying not to spring too much on her at once. But yeh, Monica just found out Friday that she’s pregnant.

HAMILTON: I should have known. Monica said she wouldn't ride Jake's sled till next winter. And Finn said he needed to go shopping Friday afternoon - for something so important that he couldn't go to Dr. Hotchkiss' tea. That was… ?

BELLA: A ring, yes. Diamond, traditional setting, really lovely. Monica showed it to us last night.

HAMILTON: But I don't think she's wearing it this afternoon …

BELLA (exchanging eye-rolls with ANNE): Duh! Because Jacqueline would have noticed immediately. She's a girl, Hamilton!

HAMILTON (wincing): And I'm an idiot.

ANNE: Just a terminal case of testosterone poisoning. Half the world suffers with you.

MARK (to WILL): So Finn really did need Charlie Friday night?

WILL: Seems likely. … (To HAMILTON:) And Monica's pregnancy is part of why she accepted your dad’s offer to be the girls’ school’s headmistress and teach drama. She wants to be around for her second child, way more than she was for her first. And it’ll let her be here for Jacqueline, too.  They’ll be living in the same building – with Consuela – for next three years.

HAMILTON: Will, they didn’t tell us about that, either.

WILL: Oh god … (To BELLA:) Why did they tell us, then?

BELLA: To thank you for getting them together?

SCOUT: And maybe because they assumed you wouldn’t mention it to anyone until they made it public?

WILL (wincing): I’m such a hopeless townie …

MARK: It’s OK, guy. We all love you. Like Scout said, all anybody asks is that you not make the same mistake twice. But his Pygmalion project still needs some work.

ANNE: And it’ll be our pleasure to help. Ham, you’re in the way. (She pushes in to hug WILL.)

MARK: Well, congrats, Ham. You’ll be the only guy at this school whose parents and girlfriend’s parents all live here, able to keep tabs on you and Jackie. It’s perfect.

HAMILTON (recovering): Kinda nice, actually. Remember what we were saying about families being way too small nowadays? Well, mine – ours, all of ours – just grew. And Monica’s not exactly prudish.

SCOUT: No joke. She and Finn didn’t waste much time, did they?

WILL: They don’t have much time. She’s pushing forty.

HAMILTON: So my dad’s offering Monica the headmistress and drama teaching job, and her accepting it – when did all that happen?

WILL: Your dad suggested it over dinner here at your house yesterday. Monica decided to accept while we were talking at the guest cottage.

HAMILTON: You mean you and Bella helped Finn talk her into it.

WILL (shrugging): Maybe a little. Bella more than me. She’d just toured the girls’ school and was really taken with it.

ANNE (to BELLA): And you’re a motherless girl who’s close to Monica’s daughter … and whom the headmistress can mother.

BELLA: The maternal hormones did seem to be kicking in. 

HAMILTON: Well, my parents and I will spend Christmas with Finn and Monica and Jake in Manhattan. Sounds like that’ll be full of surprises – for Jake.

WILL: Sorry, Ham.

HAMILTON (pulling WILL close): Hey, it's OK. What' good's a Swiss vault without secrets to keep?

BELLA: Well, there's one you can stop keeping.

HAMILTON (nuzzling WILL): Mmmm … What's that?

BELLA: The one you've been planning to use to soften, for Monica, the blow of learning that her daughter cross-dressed. … (To SCOUT:) What we we've been missing in _R and J_ , which Ham saw in mid-October, and Will heard last night, and you'll hear New Year's Eve.

SCOUT: That good?

WILL: Better.

BELLA (to HAMILTON): It would make the perfect engagement present for Finn and Monica.

ANNE: Yeh, it would.

MARK: For sure.

WILL: Might even move Finn to let me take a few "independent study" courses next spring and summer - to write the teen novel I've gotta write now.

MARK: Which, given what we hope to use it for, would not be unreasonable.

HAMILTON: No way! Not if Monica's gonna teach drama here. She'd make us stage it. And rehearse endlessly. And invite …

ANNE: All her Broadway, West End and Hollywood friends. Which Jackie would love. 

MARK: Could even launch a career. And you, Romeo, owe the stage a Pratt.

(JAKE, MONICA, FINN, KATE and the DEAN come out the front door and stand on the porch. JAKE, her red backpack over a shoulder, wears her open white parka and scarf over her white blouse, sweater, skirt and high leather boots; MONICA her cashmere coat and purse; FINN, his trenchcoat; KATE, a woolen shawl; the DEAN his worsted suit and sweater-vest.)

HAMILTON: Oh god … 

MARK: We'll do it with you. … (Turning HAMILTON to face JAKE:) "You are a lover. Borrow Cupid's wings, and soar with them above a common bound."

(The crowd of students across the street becomes livelier and noisier. LENA closes her textbook, pulls out a mobile phone, opens it, fiddles.)

DEAN: Good afternoon, Miss Crompton … Mr. Johnson, Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Krudski. … (Nodding toward the crowd of students:) That’s not your work, I trust?

MARK: No, sir, it’s not.

DEAN: But you do have an explanation?

SCOUT: They’re here to see Jacqueline, Dr. Fleming.

DEAN: Haven’t they already seen her, yesterday evening at dinner?

WILL: That was before they heard her story. And as you said, sir, it’s quite a story.

(From the mob of students, shouts, becoming a chant, of “JAKE, JAKE, JAKE, JAKE …”)

DEAN (to JAKE): It seems a performance is wanted. Are you up to this?

JAKE: That I am my mother’s daughter I’ve no need of a father’s word. … (She unslings her backpack. Giving it to FINN:) Mom, dig me out my heels, please?

HAMILTON (to MARK): This was not on the playbill.

ANNE: Encores never are. Chill.

(JAKE, FINN and MONICA join SCOUT, WILL, HAMILTON, MARK, BELLA and ANNE in the driveway. ANNE and MARK exchange nods of greeting with MONICA as she digs JAKE’s high-heeled shoes out of the backpack. JAKE turns to face the crowd. Slowly, she takes off her coat, handing it, with a fully extended arm, to SCOUT.)

SCOUT (taking the coat, kissing JAKE’s hand): For next summer, with Grace … thank you.

(JAKE smiles at SCOUT, turns, profile to the crowd, takes the heels from her mother, dangles them from two fingers in front of HAMILTON. HAMILTON hands his camera to FINN, who takes it, slinging JAKE’s backpack over a shoulder. MONICA, FINN, MARK, ANNE, SCOUT and BELLA retreat a few paces up the driveway toward the house. HAMILTON takes the heels from JAKE, kneels down in front of her. They talk softly, unheard by others:)

JAKE (as HAMILTON removes her boots): Ya startin’ to feel that weight Scout talked about Thanksgiving night … the weight of living up to expectations?

HAMILTON (slipping JAKE’s heels on): How couldn’t I? My parents … your mom and Finn … Anne and Mark … Bella and Will … and apparently a whole school … all depending on us. If we blow it …

JAKE (wrapping her scarf around HAMILTON’s neck and raising him up by it): Yes, dependents … a whole family and a whole school full of them. Precisely what you just told your father you wouldn’t have for years. … (Raising her arms above her head:) The weight’s a gift, Hamilton. It’ll bind us – till other dependents come.

HAMILTON (pulling JAKE’s sweater off over her head): So we’re past choice already. … God, Jake, can we do this?

JAKE (unzipping HAMILTON’s sweater): Alone we couldn’t. But all the people who need us will help us. … (Wetting her finger, running it down HAMILTON’s shirt:) Not just to live up to their expectations, Hamilton. To exceed them.

(From the crowd, cheers and wolf-whistles.)

KYLE (in the crowd): “More!”

(RYDER holds up his hand. The students fall silent.)

RYDER: Mr. Stratton … (Beckoning KYLE forward:) A snowball, if you please.

(KYLE, chagrinned, packs a snowball, offers it to RYDER).

RYDER: Put it on top of your head, Stratton. Hold it there, hand flat. Lena, you’ve a book, would you please do the needful?

(LENA pockets her still-open phone, then flattens the snowball with her textbook.)

RYDER: Thank you. Now, Stratton, rub it in. That’s right. I believe we’re done here.

(KYLE steps back. LENA takes her phone out of her pocket. RYDER turns, renders JAKE a courtly bow.)

RYDER: Miss Pratt, the street is yours.

(Eyes fixed impassively on RYDER, JAKE struts down the driveway in to street, turns round in front of Ryder, throws up her arms. Applause and wolf-whistles change into a chant of “SPEECH, SPEECH, SPEECH …” JAKE lowers her arms, holds up one hand until they hush.)

JAKE (toward the students):

          “The quality of mercy is not strain’d,  
           It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven  
           Upon the place beneath.

(toward HAMILTON:)

           It is twice blest;  
           It blesseth him that gives and her that takes.

(toward the DEAN, on the porch:)

           ‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes  
           The throned monarch better than his crown. …  
           It is an attribute to God himself;  
           And earthly power doth then show likest God’s  
           When mercy seasons justice.”

(JAKE bows to the DEAN, remains bowed while he responds.)

DEAN: “Consider,  
           that in the course of justice, none of us  
           Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy;  
           And that same prayer doth teach us all to render  
           The deeds of mercy.”

JAKE (straightening): “I can no other answer make but thanks … (To HAMILTON:) and thanks … (To the crowd:) and ever thanks.”

(Enthused applause gives way to shouts for HAMILTON. He remains still. JAKE crosses her arms, eyes the crowd, slowly turns toward HAMILTON, beckons him to her with the forefinger of her right hand, its elbow cupped in her left hand. HAMILTON hands JAKE’s sweater to FINN, walks toward her. When he reaches her, HAMILTON takes off JAKE’s scarf, throws it over her shoulders, pulls her to him. The students chant for a kiss, deafening themselves to what JAKE and HAMILTON say, softly, to each other:)

JAKE (placing her hands on HAMILTON’s chest): Bella’s scholarship … thank you.

HAMILTON (cradling Jake’s head in his hands): I did that for all of us, for the school.

JAKE: I know, dean’s son. And Hamilton …

HAMILTON: Mmmm?

JAKE: When I’m acting, I am myself.

HAMILTON: I know, actress’ daughter.

(JAKE and HAMILTON kiss. The DEAN’s arm slides around KATE’s waist. One of FINN’s hands finds one of MONICA’s. WILL’s eyes find BELLA’s. LENA smiles sympathetically at RYDER, who returns her a pained half-smile. MARK and ANNE kiss. When JAKE and HAMILTON break off, the students surge in to congratulate them. But only for a few seconds …)

RYDER (loudly): Enough! Everyone back to the curb. … Now!

(The students retreat, leaving only HAMILTON, JAKE and RYDER in the street.)

RYDER: Thank you, Miss Pratt. I’m sure we all wish you a safe and pleasant journey back to your current school. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we Rawley students have a matter to attend to.

(HAMILTON’s eyes prompt JAKE to join her mother in the driveway. JAKE does so.)

RYDER: Mr. Krudski, Mr. Calhoun – Mr. Fleming looks lonely. Would you be so kind as to join him?

(SCOUT hands JAKE’s coat to FINN, then, with WILL, joins HAMILTON in the street.)

RYDER: You’ve handled matters smoothly, Fleming. We’re all impressed. Yet it’s been said the course of true love never did run smooth. Why do you think that is?

HAMILTON: Because when love’s course does run smooth, it never gets a chance to prove it’s true. Nobody in his right mind wants such a chance. But we play the hands we’re dealt.

RYDER: Indeed we do, Fleming. Shall we play yours out? … Mr. Krudski, are you acquainted with this school’s honor code?

WILL: Uh, yeh.

RYDER: What, pray tell, does it say about a student who conceals lying by another student about a matter of concern to the school?

WILL: It says he’s just as culpable as the student who lied.

HAMILTON: That’s my rap, Ryder. Leave Will and Scout out of it. They didn’t know until the last day Jake was enrolled here, after she’d left school for August break.

RYDER (ignoring HAMILTON): And who, Mr. Calhoun, does it say is the injured party? The school administration only?

SCOUT: No, every student in the school. That’s why any student can convene an Honor Committee hearing.

RYDER: Very good, Calhoun. I expect that, under the circumstances, none of us would wish to do that. Provided, of course, that the claims of justice are not wholly disregarded. … The lake is liquid again, Mr. Haggerty?

GROUNDSKEEPER: Oh yes, sir, nice and warm. At least a degree or two above freezing.

RYDER (to the crowd:) Then I submit that Messieurs Fleming, Krudski and Calhoun have earned a swim. Say, two laps to the town dock and back for Fleming, one for Krudski and Calhoun? … (To SCOUT, WILL, and HAMILTON:) Any objection, gentlemen? … No? I thought not. … (To the crowd:) Is there anyone for whom that will not suffice?

MARK (loudly, disengaging from ANNE): Me, Ryder. … (MARK, all eyes on him, walks to join SCOUT, WILL and HAMILTON.) … I knew, too. Longer than Hamilton did.

(RYDER, along with everyone else, looks at JAKE, who nods sheepishly. RYDER then casts an accusing glance at LENA, who returns him a chagrinned eye-roll.)

RYDER (plainly not welcoming this development): How much longer, Johnson?

MARK: About a lap longer, Forrest.

RYDER: Three laps?

HAMILTON: I’ll do them with him … Forrest.

SCOUT: So will Will and I.

(WILL nods his agreement. Murmurs of “too much” and “dangerous” from some upperclass students in the crowd.)

JAN: Is that safe, Finn?

FINN: With five strong swimmers on each bank ready to go in after them, and a couple of boats out in the lake, yes. You’d want those anyhow, even for only one lap, at this season.

RYDER: Three laps, then, for all four of them. Is there anyone whom that will not satisfy?

(Silence.)

RYDER: Sufficient punishment, Dean?

DEAN: For Mr. Krudski, more than sufficient. For Mr. Johnson, whose case is known to me, ample. And for Mr. Calhoun, sufficient on one condition.

SCOUT: What, sir?

DEAN: That you dine with Kate and me tomorrow.

SCOUT (after exchanging a smile with HAMILTON): With pleasure. Thank you.

DEAN (to RYDER): But the case of my own son I should refer to the Board.

RYDER: About that, sir … there’s someone who’d like a word with you.

LENA (into her mobile phone): Senator?… Yes, sir. Thank you for staying on the line. You heard everything? (She nods to RYDER.)

RYDER (opening his own mobile phone, punching a button): Forrest Ryder again, sir. We’ll have you on conference and speaker, with an audience of a couple hundred, understood? … (To JAN:) Jan, take Lena’s phone to the Dean, please?

(JAN takes LENA’s phone, carries it to the DEAN, hands it to him. RYDER continues to hold his phone open, on speaker, in the street.)

RYDER: Go ahead, Senator.

(Voice of JOHN Calhoun, pure Locust Valley lockjaw, from the two phones): ‘Afternoon, Steven.

DEAN: ‘Afternoon John.

JOHN: Please convey my compliments to Jacqueline and Hamilton. Rebecca and I look forward to seeing them again soon.

DEAN: Again?

JOHN: They called on us here in Greenwich Labor Day weekend. Shortly after Jacqueline accepted admission to Grottlesex, and after they’d sent the Honor Committee their sealed affidavits, of which they gave me copies.

DEAN: Hamilton neglected to mention that to me this weekend.

JOHN: More my place to do that, don’t you think?

DEAN: And you neglected to mention that when we last spoke.

JOHN: I did. Did you and your family have a pleasant Thanksgiving, Steven?

DEAN (laughing): Yes, we did. … Thank you.

JOHN: Good. I e-mailed scans of those affidavits to the other Board members this morning after Miss Pierce and Mr. Ryder phoned me, then managed to hold a brief conference call with three of them. Since that’s a quorum, I can assure you that what Ryder proposes is quite sufficient punishment for Hamilton.

DEAN: Thank you, John.

JOHN: My best to Kate. And be careful. If you keep turning out kids like these, we may decide that the school can run itself.

DEAN: It could. But I’m ornamental.

JOHN: So Becky keeps reminding me. … Ryder?

RYDER: Yes, sir?

JOHN: I suggest you get on with it. Safely.

RYDER: Yes, sir.

JOHN: And you’ll hear from me. As will Miss Pierce and Miss Rosenfeld. Goodbye, Ryder.

RYDER: Goodbye, Senator.

(The Dean returns LENA’s phone to JAN. RYDER and JAN close the phones.)

RYDER (to the crowd): Well, then, what are we waiting for?

(The students surge in, lift SCOUT, WILL. HAMILTON and MARK onto shoulders, and carry them off toward the lake. BRANDON and LIZ pull JENNIFER and SEAN into that. RYDER pulls the shovel out of the snowbank, hands it to the GROUNDSKEEPER; together, they begin to trudge after the students. LENA remains at the curb. The three golden retrievers run after the crowd of students.)

JAKE (loudly, walking toward the street): Forrest …

RYDER (stopping, to the GROUNDSKEEPER): I’ll catch up. (He walks back toward JAKE.)

JAKE: Thank you.

RYDER: No - thank you. (He turns and starts to follow the crowd toward the lake.)

LENA (touching RYDER's hand as he passes): Forrest …

RYDER (pausing briefly): Stay. See Jacqueline off.

LENA: Thanks.

RYDER (squeezing her hand): See ya when I see ya, love.

(RYDER runs after the crowd the crowd of students. JAKE, BELLA, LENA and ANNE converge at the end of the driveway, as the DEAN, KATE and JAN join FINN and MONICA near the van. The camera pans in on the four girls.)

JAKE (to LENA): That was almost enough to make me forgive you.

ANNE: For what?

JAKE: For giving my binder to Grace. She’s wearing it.

BELLA: Under guy rags, with her hair cut short. To help Scout wait.

ANNE: Oh no …

BELLA: The good news is, he likes her makeover.

JAKE: A lot. Grace got him to see reason.

ANNE: We'll have them with us?

JAKE: From January. Limited, until next summer, but good … (To LENA:) Very good.

(JAKE hugs LENA, pulling in BELLA and ANNE. The camera pans onto JAN and the adults.)

FINN (to JAN): … So go help Haggerty make sure it’s done right, please. You know the form.

JAN: Yes, but the form’s for warm weather. The water’s freezing.

FINN: So adapt. There are blankets and towels in the boathouse. As soon as they’re thrown in, they toss their clothes onto the dock. Blanket-bag their wet clothes, footwear and personal effects separately. When they come out, towel them dry, wrap them up, and bring all five of them and their things back to my suite, not to their rooms, quickly. No lingering at the boathouse, and no showers.

JAN: And boats in the lake and swimmers on each bank. Got it. Shall I launder their clothes?

FINN: I’ll do that.

JAN: Finn … (She shoots a pained, pleading glance at BELLA, LENA, JAKE and ANNE, hugging at the foot of the driveway, then back at FINN.)

FINN: I’ll try. … Have any plans for this evening?

JAN (kissing FINN on the cheek): I do now. You’re a dear. … Dean Fleming?

DEAN: Yes, Jan?

JAN: If you’d like to talk this evening about how the _Rag_ ’s going to cover all this …

DEAN: I would.

JAN: Talk with Alice, please. She’s been working on it with me. I’m sorry, but I may be occupied.

(JAN runs off after the crowd of students, handing LENA’s phone back to her as she passes her.

DEAN (to FINN): Occupied?

FINN: Scout. With Fred’s consent.

(The DEAN’s eyebrows rise.)

KATE (to the DEAN): Rowing lessons have consequences. … And so does what Ryder just did. Steven, Finn – did either of you put him up to that?

(The DEAN and FINN both shake their heads in negation.)

MONICA (to KATE and the DEAN): How far your little candle throws his beams!

DEAN: If the moon shone, we should not need such candles.

FINN: But we are here as on a darkling plain …

KATE (to the DEAN): So, love, let us be true to one another.

DEAN (nuzzling KATE): Mmmm … Us and the kids. … Monica, when are you due back in Manhattan?

MONICA: No particular deadline. Rehearsals don’t start till next week. Why?

FINN: Because what Ryder's doing for Hamilton might warrant delaying your departure.

DEAN: In order to facilitate infractions of several school rules, to which I can turn a blind eye, but with which I cannot be directly involved. Entirely Finn’s show, I’m afraid.

MONICA: Until when?

FINN: Until lights-out at the school, at eleven. Up for an evening pumping gas with me and an old friend of mine? Doing a bit of laundry? Maybe delivering some pizza?

MONICA: Trying to teach me an honest trade?

FINN: And to acquaint you with Jacqueline’s prospective summer job and employer-landlord. Also with his daughter, her prospective co-worker.

MONICA: Sounds delightful. Worth driving to Grottlesex after dark.

KATE: Thank you, Monica.

MONICA: Don’t mention it. … (To FINN:) “I go and come with a strange liberty.”

(FINN puts an arm around MONICA. JAKE, BELLA, LENA and ANNE approach the adults.)

DEAN: Miss Banks, welcome. it’s a pleasure to see you here.

KATE: Indeed it is, Bella.

BELLA: Thanks, Dean Fleming, Mrs. Fleming. It’s good to be here.

DEAN: A great many people would like very much for you to be here all the time.

BELLA: Several of them, including Hamilton, have made that quite clear since Ryder brought me your kind offer yesterday.

DEAN: I hope they were persuasive.

BELLA: Very. I accept, and thank you very much. My written reply will come soon, with the information you requested.

DEAN: Excellent. I look forward to discussing that with you in greater detail.

BELLA: So do I, sir. … Mrs. Pratt, Finn, good to see you again.

MONICA: Likewise, Bella.

JAKE: You’ve met?

MONICA: Yesterday evening.

JAKE (to BELLA, eyes narrowing): You and Will are _soooo_ wicked … 

BELLA: Later. (She eye-cues JAKE to introduce LENA.)

JAKE (recovering): Yeh. … Mom, this is Lena Rosenfeld, a first-year here, and my friend. Lena – Monica Pratt, my mother.

MONICA: Lena! This is a pleasure. Thank you for your kindness to Jacqueline last summer. The pain she caused you was ultimately my fault. Please accept my apologies.

LENA (extending her hand): Mrs. Pratt, Jacqueline’s all the thanks or apology I want. It’s great to meet her mom.

MONICA (shaking LENA’s hand): Thank you, Lena.

LENA: Jacqueline, aren’t you going to introduce me to the handsome guy with his arm around your mom? I once had a lit teacher who looked a lot like him - but less happy.

JAKE: Nah, he’s just a crackpot who accosted my mom in September with some creepy story about her daughter cross-dressing. She only keeps him around for his body.

LENA: You’ve been hiding this, too? For two months?

JAKE: Hey, I didn’t know till this afternoon, girl. It’s Krudski’s doing.

LENA: Will?

FINN: Almost your match as a matchmaker, Lena.

LENA: Oh my god …

FINN: And yes, I am very happy, thank you.

DEAN: Speaking of Mr. Krudski …

KATE: Steven, let me, please. … Bella – Steven and I have grown very fond of Will. Not just as a student, and not just as our son’s friend. For many reasons, including some you may never know. We’ve heard that you and Will came out as a couple yesterday evening at the dining hall. We wish you well together.

DEAN: And when we can help, tell us, please. Will’s too damned proud. I hope you’re not, too.

BELLA (laughing): I’ll try not to be. Thank you both.

MONICA: Jacqueline – you, Anne and I should get going.

JAKE: Mom, do we have time to have a Coke in town with Bella and Lena before we leave? I’d like you to get to know Lena a little - and I need to talk with Bella's sister.

MONICA (after looking at FINN, but getting no cue): Sure. Hop in back with the sled, girls.

JAKE: Finn, if you have time, come with us.

LENA: Yes, do, please.

FINN: Sorry, I can’t. There’ll be five cold wet boys at my hall in a few minutes. They’ll want to head for hot showers, but that’s wrong for hypothermia – shock risk. However, my suite has a working fireplace. An electric blanket. Quilts. And a stove. Perhaps some hot mulled port …

LENA: Excuse me - five cold wet boys? Only four boys are being dunked, and only three of them live in your hall, Finn.

DEAN (sighing): Aren’t school traditions taught at the girls’ campus?

KATE: The want of a headmistress, perhaps.

DEAN: Lena – Forrest called for their dunking, so he’ll have to dive in, fully clad like them, before the first of them is thrown in, and stay in until the last of them comes out. It’s the form – discourages abuse. … Hasn’t been done at this season in my time, though.

(JAKE, LENA, BELLA, and ANNE exchange glances of shock fading into awe.)

KATE: And Hamilton won’t trudge back here freezing wet. The boys’ school’s much closer to the lake, and has clothes dryers. And Hamilton may want to thank Forrest - don’t you think, Jacqueline?

JAKE: Thank and welcome.

BELLA: So may Will and Scout and Mark.

LENA: If Forrest will let them.

ANNE: Why wouldn’t he?

LENA: Because with those thanks will come forgiveness.

KATE (smiling softly at the DEAN): Yes, and to accept forgiveness can be hard. … (To LENA:) Guys aren’t so good at all that, are they?

(JAKE, BELLA, LENA and ANNE again exchange glances – this time, of anxiety.)

DEAN: Well, Finn, you have things to do. Monica, perhaps you might drop Finn off at the boys’ school?

MONICA (suppressing a grin, eyes narrowed, head half-turned:) My pleasure, Steven. Climb in, girls.

JAKE: Mom …

FINN: Jacqueline, trust me, please.

(JAKE looks first at FINN, then at MONICA, who nods almost imperceptibly.)

JAKE (to BELLA, LENA and ANNE, softly): Get in.

LENA (softly but plaintively): Jake …

JAKE: It’s covered. Get in. (She opens the van's side door.)

ANNE (to JAKE, while looking at FINN and MONICA): We’ll be phoning Mr. Jenkins?

JAKE (picking up her boots): Yes. (She tosses the boots into the van.) 

ANNE (clasping LENA by the arm): Come with.

(FINN helps ANNE and LENA into the back of the van. BELLA, casting apprehensive look at JAKE, follows them in. The DEAN helps MONICA into the driver’s seat. JAKE approaches the DEAN and KATE.)

KATE ( _sotto voce_ , to JAKE, hugging her): Now go with Finn and … do what you have to do.

DEAN: Then go start racking up winter term grades that will make it easy for me to bring you back here.

JAKE (nodding, hugging the DEAN): Thank you. Especially for raising him.

DEAN: _Non nobis_ , Jacqueline. We’re as grateful as you are. … (Disengaging, lifting JAKE’s chin:) And for you no less than for Hamilton.

(FINN helps JAKE into the back of the van, shuts the door behind her.)

MONICA (starting the ignition): Kate, Steven, thank you both. For the brunch, and for everything.

KATE: You’re welcome. We’ll see you in New York next month.

(FINN climbs into the front passenger's seat.)

MONICA: You’ll see me in a couple of days. I have a motorbike to cart back here. … (Looking at FINN:) Which could have an upside.

FINN (grinning): It could.

(The van drives off. KATE and the DEAN watch it leave, waving good-bye.)

KATE: So, are there any rules we wouldn’t incite them to break?

DEAN: Just one. A strange liberty.

KATE (after a pause): Shall we phone the Johnsons?

DEAN (walking KATE toward the front door): That can wait a couple hours.

KATE: What can't?

DEAN (nuzzling): That blubbering we didn't do Thursday night?

KATE (smiling): Yes, we’ve procrastinated long enough, haven’t we?

 

*       *       * 


	20. Envoi

EXT - RAWLEY BOYS’, MAIN GROUND FLOOR CORRIDOR. DAY 6 - SUNDAY (NIGHT).

 

(The time on the grandfather clock in the corridor reads almost eleven. The lights in the corridor and common room are dimmed, save for a dying fire in the hearth. Both are deserted, save for the GROUNDSKEEPER, who stands in the entryway, back to the camera, looking up at the Rawley Crest above the entryway. His distinctive parka is unbuttoned, his scarf loose. His right hand shoulders a shovel, his left holds his hunting hat.

The camera follows his gaze, focusing on the crest proclaiming the school motto, **_VERITAS EST VIRTUS_**. From behind the camera, a set of footsteps is heard coming slowly down the main staircase.)

GROUNDSKEEPER:

         So, “too good to be true”? Well, at this school  
         what’s real’s thrown to the wind to feed love’s flame,  
         burnt for love’s fuel. Unless you’re such a fool  
         that what is and what should be seem the same  
         if you feel Rawley’s real, we really fail.

         But “too good to be true”? That’s … What’s that word?

WILL (from the bottom of the staircase): An oxymoron.

(The GROUNDSKEEPER turns to face WILL. The camera sees the GROUNDSKEEPER’s face for the first time in this scene. It’s young. And he’s thinner. He and WILL walk toward each other, meet in mid-corridor.)

GROUNDSKEEPER (giving his shovel, hat, scarf and coat to WILL):

         Thanks. … Look, I should bail.  
         Classes and lasses – neither wait, I’ve heard.

(The young GROUNDSKEEPER, now wearing a navy-blue Rawley blazer and dress shirt, scurries lithely up the stairs. WILL watches him go, smiles, then opens the door to the basement store-room and descends the stairs, carrying the GROUNDSKEEPER’s outerwear and shovel and talking over his shoulder to the camera, which descends after him.)

WILL: Dreaming’s like shoveling, sometimes. You need snow -  
         bone-chilling discontent. You’ve gotta wait  
         till there’s a blizzard. When? You never know.

(WILL puts the shovel into a vacant slot in a long row of identical shovels, each with a nameplate on the handle, near the shovels of SCOUT Calhoun, MARK Johnson and HAMILTON Fleming. His shovel bears the name, “Brian Haggerty.” No shovel bearing WILL’s name appears.)

WILL: I’ll see ya when I see ya. It’s a date.

(From inside the GROUNDSKEEPER’s office, BELLA opens its door leading onto the storeroom. WILL walks to the door, kisses her lightly.)

WILL (to the camera, an arm around BELLA):

        Well, I’m home. Time for you to go home, too.  
        Grow old. Love badly. What else can we do?

(WILL goes inside the office, shuts the door. BELLA, seen through the glass partition, laughs upon seeing the GROUNDSKEEPER’s coat, scarf and hat; she pulls WILL to her. The bell carillon starts to play the full Westminster Quarters and toll eleven hour-strokes.

The camera turns, climbs up the stairs to the ground floor corridor, glances up at the Rawley crest in the entryway, walks out the front door, looks around at the moonlit view, starts to cross the veranda toward the parking lot. Several girls, one in a white parka, are climbing into the rear door of MONICA’s van, just outside the gate of the parking lot. The camera stops briefly as the van’s door closes. After the eleventh hour-stroke of the carillon, a click.

The camera turns left and right, sees nothing, moves on as the van quietly drives off. A second click.

The camera turns around. In the raised-open left-hand window above the door, his face partly obscured by his camera pointing directly at the film camera, is HAMILTON Fleming. Click.)

 *       *       *


End file.
